


Personal Days

by TigerDragon



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant (Avengers), Clint Feels, Clint Has Issues, Clint Hates Phones, Communication, Developing Relationship, Dinner Parties, Displeased Hadyah is Displeased, Don't Touch Lola, F/F, F/M, Fake Character Death, Families of Choice, Family Drama, Family Feels, First Meetings, Jealous Clint Barton, Long-Distance Relationship, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Makeup Sex, Moving In Together, Moving Out, Multi, Natasha Feels, Natasha Needs a Hug, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Reunions, Skye Has No Idea What She's Walking Into, Sorry Not Sorry, Travel, We Do Not Like Audrey Nathan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-02-17 22:31:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 47,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2325551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/TigerDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Was he married?"<br/>"No. There was a cellist, I think."<br/>- The Avengers, 2012</p><p>Phil Coulson is a mature, respectable adult with a top level security clearance and a day job that keeps the free world safe from evil, aliens, destruction and global-scale incompetence. He is not the kind of guy who just falls for a girl out of the blue one day without a very good reason.</p><p>At least, that's what he'd tell you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, famous IPs do not belong to us. Please not to sue. Kthx.
> 
> This one has been percolating for a while as a bit of a personal project, and it just happened to reach the point where we're ready to start posting it this week. It's not finished yet, so we don't know exactly how long it is, but it has a beginning and an end and the middle is coming along. 
> 
> For those of you who didn't read the tags or are still wondering, we are not using the cellist from _Agents of SHIELD_ for two reasons. One, we had this idea before she came out. Two, as much as we love Amy Acker to little tiny bits, we don't think much of Audrey Nathan as a character - a more damsely damsel in distress is hard to come by in this day and age. We also much prefer a Phil who (a) goes for a real person rather than a good-guy-prize and (b) does not gaslight his loved ones. So we stuck it out with Hadyah Savchenko, instead, and we've been glad we did.

Walking out of the concert hall, Phil Coulson smiled. Vivaldi was one of the few classical composers he could listen to for very long, and it was nice to get a direct thank-you from the people he helped protect. A comp ticket, the conductor had said, was the least he could do for the agent who saved his family. So, yeah, a really nice evening.

“Agent Coulson, sir!” Carlos Kalmar, still in his tailcoat, approached him as he was leaving the lobby. “We usually go out together after the Saturday performances. Let me buy you a drink.”

Phil opened his mouth to politely decline, but then mentally reviewed his life for the past year or so. It had been ages since he’d gone out for fun, and Kalmar was pleasant enough.

Of course, Carlos had been called away in the first five minutes by his wife and sick child, and Phil was left alone with in the bar with a third of the orchestra and absolutely no connection to anyone.

“Are you going to drink that,” a woman’s soft voice intruded on his thoughts, the tone a little raspy with dehydration but full of gentle mischief, “or do you just like to hold it?”

She was well-dressed - granted, it was an after-party for a symphony, but her suit with its long skirt was in better condition than most of the other people present - and on the narrow side of slender, tall enough to look down from a couple of inches above him (that was the heels, part of his mind noted loudly, irrationally defensive), comfortable body language with a hint of tiredness. Dusky skin, dark eyes, deep brown hair - with a different set of features it might have been exotic, but her face missed delicate on the way to girl-next-door and then wandered off the road of conventional beauty altogether.

Her eyebrow arched, and he remembered he was supposed to be talking.

“Vetting it,” came out of his mouth, and he had no idea where he was going with this but he was going to roll with it until the wheels came off and he needed a new conversational vehicle. Hopefully that would take longer than the last literal vehicle the wheels had come off of. What was it with the super-powered and property damage? “I’m still waiting on the background check.” His mouth turned up in amusement at himself, and he gestured to the open seat beside him.

“It isn’t going to pass. It doesn’t have papers,” she told him with soft dryness, taking the seat - which brought her a little below eye level, and part of his ego was annoyingly relieved about that. “In fact, it probably faked its identification at the border.”

For the first time in a couple of weeks, he laughed. And the last time had been at one of Natasha’s not-exactly-jokes, which he wasn’t sure ought to count as laughing. At least not around civilians. “Oh, I know. This way I can follow the leads to its boss and...” he coughed. “Yeah, sorry about that. Office humor.” He took a drink to help shut himself up. The Scotch was middling but did the trick. Any implications of liquid courage were entirely baseless. “Phil Coulson. I enjoyed the concert very much.”

She picked up the glass of wine the bartender had put in front of her, took a sip, then ignored his compliment entirely. “If we talk for very long,” she told him, “I will probably end up telling you about the oboe which would not stay disassembled. Then we’ll be even.”

“It’s entirely possible I’m going to regret this,” Phil said, finding himself smiling again, “but, please, settle the score.”

She smiled, and for a second he wondered if he really should have vetted his drink. A moment ago she'd been pleasant, reasonably attractive, and interesting enough to make up for any embarrassment he might cause himself. Nice, not too special. But now he was inexplicably giddy and so surprised that by the time he caught up to the story, the oboe was making its third midnight appearance under mysterious circumstances to torment the second clarinetist.

Phil loved surprises. He also liked the sound of her voice, scratches and all, and kept her talking until she stopped and drained half a glass of water and then glared at him.

And, oh, he liked that, too.

“Now you know all about me,” she finally sighed, abandoning the glare when it failed to reduce him to... whatever it had been meant to reduce him to, “and all I know is your name and that you’re with law enforcement. And that you’re either rude or polite enough to let me talk myself hoarse.”

With his best open, innocent expression just barely concealing a grin, he shrugged. “Everything except your name, or which instrument you play.”

“You didn’t see me towering over the first cello?” She sounded amused instead of wounded. At least she was smiling again. “Are you sure that your eyes are in working order, Mister Coulson?”

“I was focusing on listening,” he replied, smile escaping this time. He finished off his second Scotch and waved for some water of his own. “I’m from Boston.”

“Where they teach you to listen at symphonies? I should find time to visit,” she murmured, and her smile turned crooked at the edges in a ridiculously appealing way.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” he pointed out serenely. “I mean, I could cross-reference the libretto with the databases at work, but that seems like overkill. Also, I’m not a stalker,” he tacked on with the faintest hint of alarm. “Really.”

“Do you have to assure women of that often?” she inquired with cheerful malice.

Laughing at himself, he shook his head. “The women I tend to meet consider database searches fair game.” He managed to restrain himself from telling her that Natasha periodically went through his DC apartment while he wasn’t there and checked everything - for bugs, she swore up and down - on a random basis.

Her smile lost a little bit of shine, and she drank some more of her wine. “You must meet interesting women.”

Completely without his permission, getting that light back into her eyes was Priority One. He designated a small corner of his brain to the freak-out over how far gone he was this quickly while the rest of him tried to salvage the conversation.

“In some ways, yes,” he shrugged. Her eyebrow went up again. That wasn’t good. Obviously minimization was not the way to go. “That’s not - I mean - okay.” He took a deep breath. “I’m an intelligence officer, I travel a lot, and I don’t have much time for a personal life. Pretty much everyone I interact with is also involved in the job, one way or another, and clearly my civilian social skills are much more atrophied than I thought. I would very much like to continue our conversation. It would be especially awesome if you could give me a hint about how to remove my foot from my mouth.”

Her lips twitched. For a couple of seconds he thought he might have to wash her wine out of his suit, and then she started to laugh. It was genuine as her smile had been, and he found himself adoring it even as he laughed with her.

“My father is rolling over in his grave,” she said, less to him than to the ceiling, and then stood up. “I am leaving before either of us gets any more inebriated,” she told him firmly. His stomach bottomed out even as his training kept his face neutral and his brain started feeding him contingency plans.  Then she smiled. “If you get our coats, you can walk me home. As long as you promise not to talk.”

And just like that, his emotions were soaring. He really hoped he stopped being a teenager sometime soon. “I can do that,” he smiled back at her, shrugging into his own coat and holding hers open for her once he retrieved them both from the check counter. There were, he reflected with a certain degree of discomfort, governmental facilities he’d been less determined to get things out of. Definitely a teenager.

She slipped into the long, warm overcoat and pulled on a sensible pair of winter gloves before venturing out into the evening damp.  They went up Broadway in silence, walking in the glow of the traffic, her long-legged stride carrying her along briskly in spite of the heels so that he had to adopt his official not-hurrying walk to keep up comfortably. A left up Morrison, then a right up 11th, and they were out of the part of the city he knew by feel into a quieter mixed-use neighborhood of small shops and older buildings. There were fewer streetlights, and the sliver of moonlight stole in here and there. SHIELD took him a lot of places for a lot of reasons, but this was as foreign to his day-to-day life as the moon. Actually, the moon would have been easier to deal with.

She turned off onto Alder, then stopped in front of a three-story red brick building that was too small to call an apartment complex and too big to call anything else, perched neatly over the gray marble of the storefronts. A pause for fishing in her purse for her keys, and then she turned on the stoop to look at him. Her eyes were very dark and very quiet, but after a moment or two she smiled, touched her finger to her lips and offered him her hand.

Through the leather of the glove he could feel the strength and elegance of her fingers. He stepped into her space, risked brushing a strand of dark hair away from her face. Her smile turned intimate, privately warm, and it made his heart pound against his ribs in a way that was almost painful. She lifted her free hand to his face and traced his cheek, then his jaw, then the delicate bone just under his eye. What she was looking for in his face, he didn’t know, but apparently she found it because she leaned down ever so slightly and kissed him.

The last person he’d kissed had been Natasha, open-mouthed and with Clint’s taste still on her lips, while she used language in Russian that would have made a professional blush. This was so little like that it was hard to believe they were both things two human beings did with their lips.

And, okay, he got his wish. Teenaged Phil had nothing on this. Teenaged Phil would have passed out by now.

“Hadyah Savchenko,” she whispered against his lips when they finally, ever so gently, broke the surface for air.

“Hadyah. That’s beautiful,” he murmured, the name already locked into memory.

“Phil.” She paused, laughing gently against his cheek, and kissed him again lightly. “Not short for Phillip?”

“Well, yeah,” he smiled, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Just never felt much like a Phillip.”

“Phil.” This time she sighed. “Well,” she said, in that same gently wicked voice she’d spoken her first words to him in, “I suppose it could be worse.”

Chuckling, he nuzzled the spot just under her ear. “Phillip is fine,” he said, glad he hadn’t given her licence to call him anything she wanted. Of course, that was maybe about a week in the future if things kept going like this.

She just hummed a little laugh and shook her head, cupping the back of his head to make sure she didn’t dislodge him from the side of her neck in the process. “Phil,” she said more softly. “I’ll get used to it.”

That gave him a burst of happiness he could have run the Helicarrier on. It was even enough to shut up the freak-out corner. “Great,” he said, enthusiastic as a stoned philosophy student. “That’s great. And please feel free to stop my inane babbling at any time.”

She kissed him again, laughing into his mouth, wrapping both arms around his shoulders and leaning her long, spare frame against him. “It’s charming,” she chuckled throatily, and then pressed her forehead to his for a moment. “God knows why.”

“I have wheels up at ten tomorrow,” he blurted out, then winced and wondered if he could possibly suffer a more complete failure of brain-to-mouth filtering. His mind piped up instantly with several cogent suggestions as to how he could.

“I have rehearsal at nine. I think you had better go back to not talking,” she murmured, still smiling, and then gave his chest a gentle but firm push. Taking a step back almost hurt, but he did it, and she rewarded him with a quick squeeze of his hand while she relocated her keys and got the door open. “I, for one, am twenty years too old to be making out on the front stoop with a strange man,” she told him with a sparkle of wry humor in her eyes, “so you had better come inside before I regain my senses.”

Neither of them did much talking once they were up the stairs and into the apartment. Or the morning after, for that matter, other than her easy teasing about his gallantry in letting her have the first shower. But that, strangely enough, was all right. It wasn’t tense or uneasy or full of things too ugly to talk about or even just forced by a lack of anything to say. They would talk when it was convenient.

Convenient was apparently somewhere over Alabama.

“I should have stolen your tie,” were the first words she said over the phone. “You’d look dashing without it.”

“Who says ties aren’t dashing?” he said, grinning out the window.

“I think you need to reexamine your understanding of the word. Think Clark Gable, not Clark Kent,” she suggested impishly.

Soon, he knew with a sense of foreboding, he was going to take a black-and-white tie-less selfie. God. “Mm. Maybe I’ll even forget to dot some ‘i’s.”

She giggled. It was ludicrous and charming. “Let’s not get too crazy,” she counseled. “Next thing you know, you’ll be buying a ‘64 Corvette and driving with the top down.”

“Actually,” he said with relish, “It’s a ‘62. Cherry red.”

“Cecilia?” she guessed.

“Lola,” he grinned. “Am I really that transparent?”

“As transparency film.” He could hear her smiling over the phone. “I like that about you. Unfortunately, I have to go back to rehearsal instead of standing in the hall mooning over this man I just met. If you call me tomorrow night, maybe I can babble giddily about him for a while.”

The giddiness was contagious. Either that, or he still wasn’t over his initial rush. “That can probably be arranged,” he hedged, knowing that much like Clark Kent, committing himself would land him on the next flight to Kabul or Beijing or somewhere else in a total comms blackout.

“Your loss if it can’t,” she told him, so gently serene that it made his jaw drop. “Call me when you can.”

Then she hung up.

He was definitely in trouble.


	2. Chapter 2

The mission briefing had gone smoothly, as was usual when Fury was conducting them; nobody wanted to get transferred to Siberia. Phil was on his way to requisitions when Clint and Natasha just happened to fall in on either side of him. This was going to be painful for someone. Probably him.

“You polished your shoes,” Natasha said in her best ‘I know and you know, so just spill already’ interrogation voice.

“Yes.” He was going to make her work for it, dammit.

“All your shoes,” she clarified, as though the distinction was of vital global importance.

“Technically, I had them shined,” he answered. Maybe he could have some fun with this, too.

“Plus you haven’t worn a tie to the lower-level meetings in weeks,” Clint put in, sounding almost petulant. “C’mon, Coulson, you always wear a tie.” Phil grinned inwardly. There were many interesting uses that Clint had for his ties. He was probably worried about that.

“They actually aren’t required,” he pointed out. They came to the elevator banks, and he calmly pushed the button. The three or four junior agents also waiting took one look at his escort and mysteriously remembered other places they needed to be.

“You’re drinking less and have new luggage,” Natasha prompted, folding her arms and giving Phil a long, searching look. “And you bought flowers. Twice. With cash. You should get rid of your receipts.”

The elevator arrived. As he was pressing the inside button, he smiled. “Don’t tell me you haven’t tried to check my phone logs or Internet history. I trained you better than that.”

“Brick wall.” Natasha didn’t quite growl the words. “And you changed your security protocols on your e-mail and phone. Every two days instead of weekly.”

“So,” Clint segued, a familiar mischievous twinkle in his eyes, “either you’re on an undercover assignment that requires flowers and snazzy travel gear, you sold out, or,” and here his voice actually went schoolyard sing-song, “Phil’s got a girlfriend.”  

“Girlfriend.” Natasha rolled her eyes at Clint. “He’s doing too much paperwork for undercover and he wouldn’t need condoms for selling out. Unless it’s a honey trap. But that would be silly.” She reached out and hit the stop on the elevator, then lounged against the wall and smirked. Her body language went from hard-edged interrogator to sex-on-legs in about a second and a half. “I have that angle covered.”

“And how,” Clint remarked distractedly. His eyes were dark and he was definitely a little dumber than he had been a minute ago. That would never get old. Of course, Phil’s own IQ was suffering from their combined sexiness almost as badly.

“Her name’s Hadyah,” he conceded.

“Mossad?” Clint guessed.

Natasha shook her head. “DoD. Or maybe CIA.”

“Oregon Symphony Orchestra,” Phil grinned, eyes locked on Natasha’s face. It had been a while since he’d seen her surprised. Longer since he’d done the surprising.

Her jaw actually dropped a little. It was a new record. He thought she might even be speechless.

“The fuck?” Clint’s head had whipped around to stare at Coulson and he’d lost the muzziness of arousal. “A civilian?”

“Strangely, it seems to be working. Her schedule is busy enough that I’m not the one holding things up.” That had been more than a little strange, actually. Even the last couple of times he’d tried dating in-house, his schedule had been a problem. Finding himself being the one on the phone reassuring Hanyah that it was okay she needed to cancel while he kept his own disappointment out of his voice had been one of those shoe-on-the-other-foot moments he was still trying to get his head around. And for that matter, her total lack of interest in what he actually did at work bordered on the surreal. She hadn’t even once asked him how things were going at the office.

Belatedly, he realized that Natasha was talking. When he tried rewinding his brain to find what she said, he came up with nothing. Embarassing.

“.... even filed for clearance with Personnel?” she finished, looking exceedingly cross.

“Um. Sorry. I sort of zoned out for a minute.” He winced, both because he was in trouble with Natasha and because he was trying to hide his smile.

She glared at him harder. He’d have felt less guilty if it had dented his mood in the slightest.

“Your girlfriend. Personnel department. Background checks. Regulations. Your lifelong bread-and-butter.” Clint summarized like he was talking to a not-particularly-bright recruit.

“She’s clean.” He was sure, but he hadn’t exactly gone through the official process. And yeah, that was going to go over poorly.

Clint grunted sarcastically. Phil didn’t know anyone else who could do that.

The way Natasha’s lips twitched said she’d checked the official records already. Damn. “You know we can’t leave it with just you vetting her. You did train us better than that.”

He smiled wryly. “I did. Hadyah Savchenko. Her dad was ex KGB. Defected in the 60s.”

“ _Gregori_ Savchenko?” Natasha straightened up with a jolt.

A lot of the amusement drained out of the elevator. “You knew him?”

“Before my time. He taught some of my teachers.” Clint’s face started to turn ugly, but she shook her head. “Nyet. Not those teachers. Surveillance and counter-surveillance. They said his name with respect. He was a soldier in the Great Patriotic War before he became a chekist. One day he disappeared and no-one was told why or what happened to him.”

Phil nodded thoughtfully. “From the records I found, he gave the CIA anything they asked for and then settled down. Hadyah told me he worked as an auto mechanic when she was young. She didn’t even know about his past until he was diagnosed with cancer. Apparently, he wanted her to know enough to appreciate living here.”

Natasha’s face twitched subtly for a moment, an unreadable crack in her poker face, and then she smiled. It was strange and a little bitter, but it was a real smile. Clint visibly relaxed. “Colonel Gregori Savchenko, an auto mechanic. Nobody would have believed that back home if there had been pictures.”

Phil smiled back. “There are pictures. She has one of him at a school orchestra concert in coveralls.”

Natasha’s face worked a little more. She started laughing again. It sounded better, this time. A little cleaner - more wonder, less jaded. “This I must see to believe. And I think I must meet this daughter of his, too.”

For some reason, that thought had never occurred to Phil. He blinked rapidly. “Uh.”

Clint smiled. It was his retribution smile. “Yeah. Let’s do a group date. Does she like Romanian?”

Phil opened his mouth and closed it.

“You must have known we would need to meet her,” Natasha prompted.

“Have to figure out if she’s right for you,” Clint explained, smile widening. “Can’t trust you to do it.”

He was going to have to remember not to get flanked again. He had clearly lost this round. “Fine. I’ll ask her if she’s interested.”

“You’d better. We’ll know if you try to soft-sell it.” Clint dropped his voice and got into Phil’s space a little. It was distracting in a lot of ways not really suitable for a work environment. Maybe that was why his mouth got ahead of him again.

“How, exactly?” he bit off between breathing that was a little quicker than he liked.

Clint just started laughing, low and warm and throaty. “I’ll distract you,” he said, winding the tails of Phil’s tie around his wrist, “and Tash will find a way to get it out of you. One way or the other.”

Natasha just smiled and hit the switch to free the elevator. Fortunately, Phil managed to get enough control of himself back that he wasn’t indisposed when the doors opened.

Well. He was always going to have to explain the specifics of his “it’s complicated” with Natasha and Clint sooner or later. The thought gave him a background uneasiness that lasted the rest of the day. It wasn’t like he’d had any practice. Nobody at SHIELD knew, as far as any of them could tell. They hadn’t told anyone. It was just too messy for any of them to want to bring it up. But Hadyah wasn’t the kind of woman who was going to let him get away with hiding things she didn’t want hidden either. It was going to be a very awkward conversation.

Fortunately, a rogue Malaysian science team required his attention for the rest of the day and he didn’t have time to spend on fretting about it.

 


	3. Chapter 3

“Apparently there aren’t any Romanian restaurants in Portland,” Phil said. Across the aisle, Clint shrugged casually and reclined the seat back before they’d even taken off. Not that a SHIELD passenger jet had prohibitions against reclining.

“Does Hadyah have something else in mind?” Natasha asked without looking away from her bodice-buster of a novel.

“Hungarian, I think.” For some reason, that made Clint look at Phil in suspicion.

Natasha laughed. Clint just glared harder, and at both of them. Not the heart-stopping glare ‘the Hawk’ was famous for around the Triskelion, but a look of disgruntled ill-humor that made Clint look like the kind of sulky bad boy that girls fell for in high school. It was totally undignified.

The corner of Phil’s mouth twitched up. He didn’t know exactly how many people had seen that glare since Clint last visited a principal’s office, but he was pretty sure he and Natasha made up at least half the list. Maybe all of it.

If Clint felt relaxed enough to openly pout, it was a good sign.

Feeling significantly calmer himself, Phil dug his phone out, switched to airplane mode, and nodded to Clint. “Sudoku playoff?”

Clint narrowed his eyes. “You cheat. I don’t know how, but you do.”

Phil was grinning now. “If you can’t handle my totally legal playing, I can always take a handicap. You want a head start or to play on an easier setting?”

“I can’t believe I like you.” Clint was smiling now, too, in that way that told Phil it was an unwilling escape of good humor. “Need to get checked for concussion damage again, clearly.”

“What day is it?” Natasha murmured, still engrossed in her book.

“Thursday.”

“What is my name?”

Clint snorted. “What time of day is it and what country are we in?”

“How many times did Phil try to convince you not to get his pants open in the Hamburg airport?”

“Five. Maybe six - I got distracted and stopped counting.”

“You’re fine.” Natasha’s eyes stayed on her book, and her expression stayed perfectly deadpan. That was normal enough. The way she folded a little more into her seat, on the other hand, was probably not a good sign.

Phil turned to her and raised a concerned eyebrow. She ignored it. Clint, on the other hand, made a little wave-off gesture with his right hand. _Leave it alone._

Shrugging, Phil leaned back in his own seat.

“I can’t believe you convinced me to wear a suit,” Clint muttered, deliberately breaking the momentary but extremely thick silence. “I don’t remember the last time I wore a suit when I didn’t have to.”

“Bruges,” Natasha supplied cooly.

“That was for work.” Clint fidgeted lightly with the buttons on his waist-coat - because apparently three-piece without a tie was the order of the day, and Phil had to admit that it was a good look on him. Strange and un-Clint-like, but good. “It was your idea.”

Natasha turned the page. “I could have gone. You didn’t have to - you insisted.”

A slight shift in posture and a more mask-like glare got Phil to pick up the plane’s cabin guide and find the instructions for running the TV. “This conversation thing is going so well I’d like to quit while we’re not strangling each other,” he said. “What’s good - nature documentary, or...yeah, that’s the only choice that really works.” Action, sci-fi, thriller, and mystery all tended to be too much like work, he hated romances (though Clint not-so-secretly didn’t) and they all hated dumb comedies. “Dinosaurs or big cats?”

“Is one of them narrated by Morgan Freeman?” When Phil’s expression gave away that they weren’t, Clint settled in against the frame of the window and let his eyes unfocus. At least, it looked like unfocusing. For all Phil knew, he was watching some bird five miles down. Clint’s eyesight wasn’t technically a superpower, but it was still positively unreal sometimes. “Don’t care. Pick.”

The cabin settled into a sort of armed neutrality, with Natasha buried in her book and Clint alternating between total stillness and fidgety restlessness, and Phil carefully watching the documentary to keep from watching them. Thirty minutes out from Portland, Natasha got up and collected her bag from under her seat before heading for the back of the plane. She could change clothes, makeup and hair in just under five minutes, but she also liked to take her time when she could.

Still, twenty minutes was pushing it. Clint caught him looking and went back to staring out the window.

“Care to clue me in?”

“She hasn’t picked who to be yet. She brought options,” Clint explained without looking at him.

Most agents had a work persona and an off-duty persona. Natasha had a library. He could remember the first time someone had tried to involve her in an office mixer at the Triskelion - Jasper Sitwell, of all people, whose work persona was about as far from the party-organizer type as possible. ‘Just be yourself,’ he’d said, and Natasha had looked at him as blankly as if he’d asked her to fetch him the moon.

Phil wondered sometimes if Clint was used to it. Phil certainly wasn’t. Natasha had either too much or too little self, and it was disconcerting either way. Clint, of course, just wanted to find all the people who’d ever been involved in training Natasha and kill them. But that was hammer and nail thinking at work. Expected in SHIELD’s best combat specialist.

Phil would have liked to find a way to heal her. SHIELD’s best therapists had taken their runs at her, of course - professional pride would have demanded it, if nothing else. Natasha had been compliant, cooperative, even friendly on occasion, but a comparison of the files they’d assembled made it clear she’d given each of them exactly what they wanted to see and not an inch more. Understandably, Natasha was not particularly trusting of doctors. Or experts in psychology.

Or anyone, really, except possibly Clint and Phil. On a good day.

Five minutes before they touched down, she emerged from the back as a business type in a black and white skirt suit whose stockings, heels and slightly loosened buttons suggested she was looking for a chance to relax. No wig or hair dye, no contacts or glasses, only modest changes in her cosmetics. On the surface, it was barely a disguise at all. The way she walked and the way she smiled, though - politely warm and interested, with a thread of laughter just waiting for the opportunity to happen - that was about as far from the woman who’d been reading a cheap romance novel next to them a few minutes before as New York was from St. Petersburg.

“You look nice,” Phil said. His smile was genuine, if a little sad.

“Thank you.” She settled neatly into her chair and checked the delicate gold watch around her wrists. “Hannah Ross. Electronics and acoustical equipment. Father worked for the CIA. Questions?”

“Wasn’t Hannah blonde last time?” Clint asked, still not looking away from the window.

“Dyed my hair on a lark.”

Clint’s lips ticked up at the corners. “Forgot your wigs?”

“I didn’t forget.” For a moment, Natasha’s narrowed eyes looked out of Hannah’s face. “Someone removed them.”

The plane bumped lightly, then started to decelerate. The pilot had a nice touch with the aircraft. Phil would have to put a note in his file - a good one.

Clint whistled cheerfully, undisturbed by Natasha’s displeasure.

“You’re gonna get it later. But you knew that,” Phil almost laughed.

“Some people are just born helpers.” Clint got to his feet and stretched, shaking the wrinkles of travel out of his suit. “It’s a gift.”

“One of these days she’s going to stop punishing you,” Phil pointed out. “You aren’t exactly subtle.”

Clint scoffed. “Subtle... that’s when you use the smaller bombs instead of the bigger ones, right?”

Natasha elbowed him in the ribs as she passed him. “You’re intolerable.”

The archer’s eyes ran over her as she headed up the aisle, and his smile turned - just for a moment - wistfully soft. “Whatever you say, Tash. Whatever you say.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

Dinner was delicious, amiable and full of pleasant conversation. It was, in short, going extremely well.

Phil was miserable.

When his colleagues slash friends slash sometimes lovers had pestered him to meet Hadyah, he’d expected more engagement from them. Well, Natasha’s character was plenty engaged, carrying on a genial conversation with both men and the cellist. Hannah, not Natasha. The Russian was sitting invisibly behind the businesswoman’s eyes. Meanwhile, Clint had disappeared into Hawkeye, impassively watching the proceedings while saying nearly nothing.

At this rate, the other agents may as well have just mined the databases for the information they wanted. It wasn’t like Hadyah was getting to know them even a little.

Embarrassingly, if not surprisingly, Phil found himself moving the remains of a cabbage roll around his plate like a child with a Brussels sprout.

Hadyah’s hand slipped in under his wrist and squeezed his fingers gently, and when he looked up he found her watching him with a tender concern in her eyes. _What’s wrong?_

Squeezing back, he smiled wryly. An unnecessary glance at Hawkeye and Hannah confirmed that they, too, were aware of his unease.

“Hadyah, could you give us a moment?” he asked quietly.

“Of course.” Her smile was so gentle and understanding that it was almost uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of it. She stood up, folded her napkin on the table, then kissed Phil very lightly before taking herself off to the small bar tucked into the corner of the restaurant where a soccer game was playing on the television.

When he turned back to the other agents, he got right to the point. “This isn’t a mission. Why are you acting like it is?”

Clint shifted, loosened the cross of his arms across his chest, leaned on the edge of the table. Natasha started toying with her glass of water - a small tell, but hers and definitely not Hannah’s. They both looked caught.

Phil blinked. It had never occurred to him, but presented with the evidence it seemed a likely hypothesis. “You’re nervous.”

“We don’t get out much,” Natasha noted softly in her own voice, her tone more than a little dry.

“Hey, there was that cafe in Hamburg,” Clint piped up.

“We don’t get out much to places we don’t eventually wind up blowing up,” Natasha amended, rolling her eyes gently.

“We only bugged that cafe,” Clint protested weakly. He cleared his throat. “The Nationalist Front blew it up. Later. That wasn’t our fault.”

Natasha just rolled her eyes again.

“I’m just saying.”

Torn between face-palming and laughing, Phil settled for a smile and an eye roll of his own.

“You don’t need to worry about it. I suffered from adolescent levels of awkwardness when we first met, and it didn’t seem to put her off.”

“You’re charming,” Clint pointed out. “Especially when you’re awkward. Remember how embarrassed you were about the first time we....”

“Public,” Natasha cut him off before Phil’s blush could start signaling planes over the city.

Clint shrugged. “It was memorable. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Keep doing that,” Phil nodded to Clint. “Unapologetic and snarky look good on you.” There was a pause. “Just not about memorable bedroom events.”

Clint raised an eyebrow to that, but a smile tried to sneak out of the corner of his mouth. “Just remember you said that. I take no responsibility for what may occur.”

“Up to a point.”

The marksman broke into a grin. “Make me.”

“If you’re good,” Phil rejoined. At this point, he still wasn’t sure if that was a promise or just banter. Hadyah, understandably, had needed time to think about sharing him.

Natasha rolled her eyes at both of them again, but her lips had started to twitch upward in a slightly unwilling smile. “She is coming back. Are you two finished flirting?”

“For now,” Phil smiled. “Thank you.”

Hadyah slipped around the table to brush her hand over Phil’s shoulders, studying his face for a moment before matching his smile. “Better?” she murmured.

Coulson nodded. It was unfair how good she looked when she smiled.

“Just calling us out on being workaholics,” Clint said.

Hadyah laughed quietly. “I know a little about that. Fortunately, in my father’s country they have a solution.” She lifted the bottle in her left hand into view - vodka, three-quarters full - and then set it in the middle of the table before seating herself. “I hope that neither of you are teetotalers.”

For a couple of seconds, Clint just stared at her. Then he started to grin. “You forgot to bring glasses,” he pointed out.

“So I did.” Hadyah smiled back at him, then unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow before offering him the bottle. “Is that a problem?”

Clint, by way of answer, just knocked back a couple of shots worth and then offered Natasha the bottle in turn. She took a slug, then ran her tongue lightly over her lips and smiled - not Hannah’s smile, but Natasha’s. “Real Stolichnaya. This is illegal for export.”

“The bartender has a taste for it, apparently.” Hadyah chuckled, took the bottle for another swallow, then offered it to Phil. “So did my father. I inherited the vice.”

Shrugging, Phil drank. Nose wrinkled, he passed it back to Clint. “Please tell me this is a nostalgia thing and not the people I care about most having terrible, terrible taste in liquor.”

Clint took another shot from the bottle. “I’ve seen you drink third re-heat coffee in the break room,” he pointed out with a smirk.

“Desperation,” Phil countered. “Starbucks doesn’t deliver at three am.”

“So, would someone like to reintroduce me?” Hadyah murmured, grinning crookedly while she watched Natasha take another long swallow from the bottle. “Because no New York girl who works in electronics sales drinks vodka like a Russian.”

Natasha froze for a moment, and then glared at the bottle in her hand before transferring the glare to Phil. “I have been entrapped,” she muttered darkly.

“Bamboozled,” Clint added with indecent cheer.

Hadyah only grinned and held out her hand for the bottle. After a few more seconds of glaring at Phil - as if it was his fault - Natasha passed it across. “Hadyah Gregorivna,” the cellist said after another long slug. “ _Budem zdorovy_.”

“It’s hard to toast with one bottle,” Natasha said, but she smiled when she said it. “Natasha. No jokes. I have heard all the jokes.”

“Jokes?” Hadyah inquired innocently, her eyes wide and curious.

Clint visibly tried to control himself for, oh, about two seconds. “Moose and squirrel?”

Natasha turned to glare at him, and Hadyah broke into an enormously pleased grin.

“Oh, you’re good,” Phil said admiringly. “He’s in so much trouble.”

Clint was too busy laughing like an idiot and drinking in Natasha’s death glare to respond. Hadyah reached over and squeezed Phil’s hand, stealing the bottle and taking another swallow, then offered him a particularly impish smile. “He is. But I was hoping to catch you.”

“Sorry,” he grinned. “That particular ship sailed the day I embedded a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode in a mission brief. I was in the doghouse for weeks.” He took another drink. It was less awful this time. At least hard liquor had that going for it. “Totally worth it, though. The look on her face.”

She laughed and kissed him gently. Then she turned back to Natasha and Clint, dangling the bottle from her fingers, and smiled with a casual sort of comfort that could not have been farther from her polite graciousness at the start of the meal. “So,” Phil Coulson’s cellist asked SHIELD’s two most dangerous field operatives, “do I pass?”

Now only chuckling occasionally, Clint managed a reply. “Tonight? A plus.”

Inwardly, Phil smiled a little sadly. Sad, because Natasha wasn’t the only one with trust issues. Smiled for the good first impression and because Clint was being honest about the “so far” tacked on to his judgement.

“Eight point five,” Natasha put in.

“From the East German judge? Not bad.” Hadyah’s eyes twinkled. “Her, I like. You, pretty boy, I’m not so sure about. I think you might be trouble.”

Clint batted his eyelashes at Hadyah. “Lots of trouble. It’s one of my charms.”

“I can see why you like him,” Hadyah mused as she squeezed Phil’s hand again. “He’s just enough of a bad idea, with plenty of lost puppy thrown in. Well, and he’s definitely not short on rugged good looks. Did the two of them come in a set labeled ‘Most Likely to Melt Unsuspecting Hearts’?”

“That’s...not how I would have put it,” Phil said faintly while Clint protested the puppy remark. Everyone ignored him.

Hadyah kissed his cheek. “Of course not. You’re too careful. You’d say something euphemistic instead. Maybe a bureaucratic acronym.”

Natasha actually giggled. Phil blinked. The last time he’d seen her giggle had been...

Taipei? Capetown? He couldn’t remember. There had been animated, dancing, singing cats involved. He remembered that part.

“She does know you.” Natasha snaked a hand across the table to steal the bottle back, then took a slug from it that would have impressed Stark. “I am impressed.”

Clint took a break from indignation to look at the two women in astonishment. Then he squinted at the bottle. “Did I have more of that than I thought?”

“Your heard right.” Phil was having a moment with his own surprise. It was the hit-by-a-truck-of-happiness kind. “Wow.”

“Men.” Hadyah shook her head and grinned crookedly, then took the bottle back from Natasha. “I haven’t had drunken lesbian sex since college. I forgot how much the booze adds to the experience.”

Natasha blinked twice, shrugged. “We are going to need another bottle if I am going to do that,” she said, her accent noticeably thicker. “Especially on a first date.”

Clint goggled. “I’ll get one,” he offered almost too fast to be understood. “Gimme five minutes.”

“Uh.” Phil rubbed his eyes, looked around the table, determined that this was, in fact, reality. “Not that this isn’t going to fuel my fantasy life for weeks, but I think we should all wait a while and have an adult conversation. While sober.” He was pretty sure Hadyah had been joking. He was completely certain that Natasha hadn’t been.

Natasha stole the bottle from Hadyah - who looked less than comfortable with how fast that had happened - and took another Stark-sized swallow from it. “Conversation is overrated.” She stood up, walked around the table, leaned against the edge of it and looked down at Hadyah in a way that made Coulson’s skin crawl just seeing her working the cellist. He could accept, if unhappily, that Natasha used sex like any other skill in her repertoire. Knowing she chose to sleep with targets on the job for the sake of SHIELD’s work was not, when it came down to it, actually harder to live with than knowing how many people Clint had put arrows in the eyes of for the same purpose.  But that was the job. This wasn’t.

But she was good enough at it that remembering how to talk was going to take longer than he wanted.

“It’s not.” Hadyah’s voice shook more than a little, but she got her hand up and against Natasha’s cheek before the smaller woman could move in for a kiss. “Overrated. Maybe now. Tomorrow, not so much.” She dragged in a breath and closed her eyes. “And Phil and I haven’t actually talked about this, so you need to sit down. Not in my lap. And maybe give him the bottle. Please?”

Natasha just sat there for a few seconds, expression still fixed in a hungry smile that had suddenly lost all its force, and then reached out to offer Phil the booze. Her eyes, when their hands touched and they came up to meet his, weren’t so much hurt as deeply confused. Not as lost as he’d ever seen her, but more than he had for a while.

“Thank you,” he murmured. He hoped that they would be able to talk about it. All of them. Especially Natasha, who had the hardest time with meta-relationship conversation. The first three times he’d tried to have a ‘where are we and what are we doing’ talk with her, after he’d started bunking with Clint and Natasha, he’d found himself talking to completely different people. They’d made progress since then. Backsliding would be painful.

Clint didn’t make any smart remarks when he appeared - quietly - behind Natasha and got his arms around her. Which meant that, whether or not he’d heard anything, he knew they were in the minefields again. But he didn’t look at Phil first. He checked Hadyah’s face. Searched it, really.

The cellist smiled faintly. “I think she needs to sleep it off. I know that I do. If you don’t have a hotel already, I have a couch.”

“Yeah.” Clint nodded slightly, shifting his grip, and Natasha went silently liquid against him. “Thanks, but we’ve got a room. They got some mean donuts here, though. Mind if we pick some up and crash your place for breakfast?”

“I think the two of you are pretty much welcome to have breakfast with me any time,” Hadyah said very softly. “Go. We’ll get the check and Phil can stay with me.”

Nodding to both of them, Clint scooped up Hannah’s purse and got his arm around Natasha’s waist. The redhead walked like an automaton with a few gears loose, but she went out on her own two feet and nobody gave them much more than a quick look. Apparently, people drinking themselves into semi-incapacitation wasn’t that unusual in this particular establishment.

Hadyah watched them go, frowning softly, but waited until they were out the door to turn and fix Phil with a look that said he wasn’t going to get off as easily. “Is she going to be all right?”

He sighed. “She’s resilient, psychologically as well as physically. I am worried that I’ll be talking to Hannah or someone else for a while, though.” He squeezed Hadyah’s hand. “It’s a risk she and I were both willing to take.”

She wrapped her fingers with his. “You wouldn’t work for people who would do that to someone,” Hadyah murmured. “Another stray of yours?”

Ignoring the implication that he collected lost souls, he shook his head. “Her handler put her on the free market about five years before Clint brought her in. The KGB trained her from an early age. She doesn’t actually know how old she was.”

“ _Chekist_ bastards.” Hadyah’s voice shook a little with controlled anger, but she smoothed it away with a long exhale. “So the two of you have been helping her for a while now. That’s a good thing.”

She smiled at him like he was not just a good man but an untarnished one. Flattering, but not entirely comfortable. “Clint gave her special help from the beginning. I started off in a professional capacity, but became more and more personally involved.”

Her lips quirked upward in a small, gentle smile. “It still bothers you that you got ‘involved’ with her, knowing about her history?” His expression must have given away his surprise, because she squeezed his hand and kissed his cheek. “You sound more like a government manual the more uncomfortable you are. You might be good at keeping secrets, but you’re a terrible liar.”

Chuckling quietly, he shook his head. “Damn. You catch on fast.” A lonely glass of water caught his attention and he drank before offering one of the others to Hadyah. “It bothers me. But at some point I had to trust that her interest was genuine, or not trust her at all.”

Hadyah picked up the glass of water and touched it to his, then took a long swallow. Paused and studied it, as if watching the refraction of the room in the glass. “My father once said to me that trust is like water. You can drink all the power and money and glory you want, but it’ll just leave you parched. Drink a little bit of trust, though, and you’ll know you can’t live without it after that. I didn’t understand what he meant until after he died and I started reading the papers and journals he left me. Trying to understand him. I still don’t, not really, but that part I understand.”

“I think I would have liked him. I think she would have, too.” He raised the water glass. “To trust.”

“To trust.” She finished the glass in a series of long, careful swallows, and then smiled crookedly. “Also to avoiding hangovers. And to finishing conversations. Like the one we’ll be having once we get home about what exactly you have in mind for me, your leggy Russian friend and the rugged Doberman who’s carrying her around.”

Laughing at the dog comparison, Phil held up his hands in surrender. “Yes, ma’am.” Standing, he counted out enough cash to cover their meal with a twenty percent tip and offered his hand. “Shall we?”

“Such a gentleman.” She chuckled and took his hand, kissing him once she was on her feet. “Are you going to get my coat again, too? I keep wondering if there’s a point at which you’re going to realize you don’t have to keep charming me.”

Holding it out for her, he smiled. “That point has passed. I just like charming you.”

“Good.” Another soft kiss and a sly grin. “It might get you a lot further along your fantasy wish list than you think.”

She left him standing there, a little thunderstruck, while she started for the door. Damn, but she had his number.

That was okay. That was more than okay. That was awesome.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Sweaty, teeth clenched, and heart hammering in his chest, Phil jerked awake silently. The nightmare collapsed into formless terror before he’d even opened his eyes, leaving him with nothing to name or confess to a therapist or journal about. Just the deep, animal fear.

For a second, he was still dreaming - surrounded by stars. Then his eyes adjusted to the faint hints of light, and familiar details spilled in. There were stars, but no sky - just the delicate white pinpoints of light tracing across a dark oak dresser and forest-mural walls and the spangled black of a ceiling broken up by the jut of bedposts that matched the dresser. Cotton sheets, faint music, the smell of honeysuckle.

Hadyah’s room. Hadyah’s bed. And, belated memory reminded him, Hadyah’s star projector.

She was watching him from the other side of the bed, calm but careful of his space. “You were shouting in your sleep,” she murmured after a moment or two of stillness. “Should I turn on a light?”

Scrubbing his eyes, he shook his head. “The stars are nice. Sorry to wake you.”

“No apologies between one and six in the morning. House rule.” She reached over and touched his shoulder lightly, then got up out of the bed and moved silently through the dark, starlit room. Came back, a moment later, with a plastic cup full of water. Sat down next to him. Held it out.

Propped up on an elbow, he gratefully obeyed. It tasted and felt way too good for a typical midnight drink. He must have been either very loud or gone on for a long time.

“Thanks.” Handing it back to her, he slumped back onto the mattress.

She put the cup on the side table, then slid over his knees to lean against him, her head on his shoulder and her arm wrapped lightly over his ribs. “Better?”

Fingers curling around the sharp bone of her hip by instinct, he let out a long breath and kissed her hair. “Much.”

They lay in silence for a while, her hand stroking lightly over his chest, until she lifted her head to look up at him with a smile on her lips that was too experienced to call nervous. “I haven’t asked if you mind that I don’t want to know about your work.”

His lips quirked up in answer. “I might resort to extreme measures if you tried.”

“Throwing pillows at me?” she suggested, laughter spilling into the darkness of her eyes. “Locking yourself in the bathroom? Playing Barry Manilow on my stereo?”

“Yes, yes, and I think it’s banned under the Geneva Convention,” he chuckled. “Earplugs. Feeding you marshmallows. Having someone text-bomb your phone.”

“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds unpleasant.” Hadyah leaned up and kissed him softly. “You do realize, by the way, that having sex and falling asleep together does not count as talking?”

Now his smile had a wince mixed in for comedic effect. “Not even if you do it right?”

“Especially if you do it right.” She kissed him again. “The better you are with me, the more I want to keep you around. Which means getting the talking part right. Trust me, I’ve tried the other thing. It doesn’t work nearly as well as you’d like to think.”

Carding a hand through her hair, he nodded. “An almost-serious relationship with the first trombone?”

“Second viola. My first orchestra gig. It turned out I wanted to play house and she wanted to catch ‘em all.” She smiled crookedly. “Don’t change the subject.”

He was in the middle of giving her a look of horror. “Was that a Pokemon reference? We don’t need to have the talk anymore. I’ll get my things.”

“You haven’t met my niece yet. She has all the games and stuffed toys she will introduce you to by name. So I can’t let you leave until you’ve had the pleasure.” Her body shook softly with suppressed laughter, but her expression was the picture of innocent regret.

“Okay,” he said softly, brushing a thumb across her cheek. “Having the talk. Where should we start?”

“Natasha.” She kissed the pad of his thumb lightly. “Boundaries.”

“It’s complicated.” He sighed, collected his thoughts. “Natasha came with almost nothing but her skill sets. Sitwell told her to be herself once and she just gave him a blank look. Since she joined SHIELD, she’s been...building herself. After eight years she has likes and dislikes, feelings, some boundaries. A few personality quirks. But her training is still default, especially with, well, anyone but Clint and sometimes me.”

“If she slept with me to hurt you, would it work?” It wasn’t the question he was expecting. Especially not in that gentle, patient voice.

The knot that suddenly appeared in his gut suggested a possible source for his nightmare. “Yes. Because she’d be doing it to hurt me. Because it would be a job, not something she wanted. Because you’d be a target to her.” His arm wrapped around her waist a little tighter. “Assuming you didn’t talk to me first, that too. And, yeah, I’d be a little jealous.” The question that he both wanted and feared to ask hung heavy in his throat. He waited.

“If she and I did sleep together, how would you feel if I fell in love with her?” She waited a handful of seconds, long enough to read his face in the dark, and then lowered her voice to a more careful whisper. “And how would you feel if I didn’t?”

Deliberately, he inhaled. Exhaled. Repeated.

“A lot jealous, if you did fall for her. Also angry and terrified because there’s only one way that could end.” The subtle tilt of her head invited an explanation without demanding it. “Could you be happy knowing that the person you love might not ever feel the same way because she can’t? Or that she’d leave you to die if the mission depended on it? Could you be happy when your most basic experiences are completely alien to her, and vice versa?”

“‘Every human creature is constituted to be that profound and secret mystery to every other,’” she murmured softly, eyes thoughtful. “I don’t know. But you didn’t answer the second part of my question.”

“You meant if you slept with her just for sex?”

“Or company. Or affection.”

The knot in his stomach loosened a little. “Assuming you both wanted it for human-contact reasons? Well...still a little jealous, but more the left out of fun stuff jealous.”

“Mmm.” The edge of her mouth ticked up in amusement, but her eyes stayed serious. “And if she fell in love with me?”

Phil felt his expression twist into the sort of confusion he hadn’t experienced since his undergrad literary criticism course. “That’s not...please recall my previous statement regarding Natasha’s fucked-up psyche.”

“I heard.” She didn’t move, and her eyes were very steady. “Answer the question anyway. And really think about it first - don’t dump it into the ‘it’s improbable so I don’t have to worry about it’ bin and try to blow me off.”

“Fine. Though for the record my entire agency is that bin. Someone has to worry about it.” He closed his eyes for a moment.

The knot moved to his heart.

“I think she’d have no idea how to cope. It’d kill me watching her get broken all over again. Especially over love.” Eyes opened, he found Hadyah’s gaze. “Especially over you.”

She reached up and touched his face lightly. “That’s how she’d feel. And how you’d feel about it. I imagine you’d tell me how Clint would feel about it next. But that doesn’t tell me what you’d feel for yourself.”

“Are you sure no one’s ever trained you in interrogation techniques?” God. He sounded petulant.

“Unless you count watching my father work over my first boyfriend, or my brother about curfew.” Her smile was gentle, but no less merciless for it. “Are you going to stop trying to avoid the feeling, or do I have to pout? I hear I have a devastating pout.”

He stuck his tongue out at her. He hadn’t done that since...he had no idea. That was either a sign of healthy relaxation - he’d read about that once - or a sign of madness.

“I don’t like you any more. Probably I’d feel old. Superfluous. Odd, because Clint’s fifteen years younger and he doesn’t make me feel like that.”

“‘It’s not the years. It’s the mileage.’” She crooked a little sympathetic grin at him. “And I’m closer to your age than theirs, you realize. Besides, you’re still getting used to being in love with me. I imagine you’ve been in love with Clint for years.”

“Probably because you make me feel young and wait what? No, don’t say anything. You can’t just weaponize deep psychological revelations like that and expect to keep talking like nothing happened and christ.” The iron self-control honed he’d over twenty years was the only thing that allowed him to (a) stop talking, (b) not try to hide under the covers and (c) stay in the room. Even with that, it was a near thing.

Hadyah said nothing in a particularly gentle way that almost made it worse.

Because she was right. Going from a very compartmentalized sort of denial to full-on realization in the space of a heartbeat was like waking up to a breached safe-house. Except that you were always half-expecting that. You had backup plans. You had years of training and drills.

God. When he re-examined his own behavior and thoughts over the years, it was crystal clear. The way he tracked Clint’s missions as closely as was professionally possible. How his mood brightened whenever the marksman was in the room. How often he’d been willing to go outside his comfort zone for the other man’s orgasms. Granted, Phil was an obliging and attentive lover by nature, but if it had just been a fuck buddy situation he’d never have done the research on electrical play.

He was in love with Clint Barton. And he had no idea if Clint returned the feeling or even knew. Natasha must have figured it out ages ago.

“Well. This is embarrassing.”

“You didn’t know.” Her hand slipped into his, squeezing gently, and her smile was utterly sympathetic. “I’m sorry. That’s always difficult.”

Confusion was a nice balm to feeling monumentally stupid. “Always? You’ve had someone else know your feelings before you did?”

“Well, no. Unless you count Richard at SFCM, but that worked out pretty well for me. I meant realizing you’re in love after you’ve done a lot of things that it would have been useful to know before.” Her lips quirked up at the corners. “That, I’ve done more than a few times.”

“In that case, sympathy accepted,” he murmured, squeezing her shoulders. “In my case it isn’t too bad. There were some missions that would have been made much worse if I’d known.” He smoothed a stray wisp of hair back from her face. “When did you figure me out?”

“You mean that you’re in love with him?” She smiled wistfully. “About twenty minutes into dinner. If you mean what kind of man you are? When you told me her name was Lola.”

He laughed. “I’ll take you to DC one of these days. Introduce you.”

“I should warn you, I don’t do driving with the top down. It destroys my hair.” The smile grew into a grin. “Unless you’re planning to do something else that will wreck my hair. Then I accept.”

“It’s a date.” Their lips came together, and the thought of Hadyah lying half-dressed on the leather seats put heat into his kiss. Her hands slipped from his and came up into his hair, and for a few long minutes they did nothing at all except bask in the slow, languid heat that was even sweeter for lacking the pangs of physical urgency. When she broke the kiss, laughing and brushing her hand over his face, she was almost painfully beautiful.

Then she kissed him lightly, grinned at him and skewered him as deftly as ever. “Don’t worry about Clint, by the way. He’s not at all my type. I’m more likely to throw a book at him than kiss him.”

He went still. The idea hadn’t even occurred to him yet. Now the idea of her kissing Clint was burning in his brain, gut-wrenching and hot and stupid-happy all at once. “Um. Okay. Very ambivalent on that one. Need time to process.”

He was getting the feeling that Hadyah had much more relationship experience than he did. Which was fine. It would just be nice if he could catch up to her thought processes.

“You know,” she murmured, tracing a kiss along his jaw and laughing ruefully, “I keep saying to myself ‘you’re not done with the talk, Hadyah, you really ought to keep your hands off him,’ and yet I seem to be failing miserably. You’re bad for my discipline, Phil.”

“Good,” he smiled, lacing his fingers into hers. “Maybe the next few sentences won’t floor me if you’re off-balance.”

“I think I’m in love with you,” she told him, squeezing his hand and putting a wryness in the words that didn’t quite hide the tremble behind it.

Kissing her tenderly was pretty much the only adequate response to that. When they parted, foreheads leaning together, he held her close. “I know I’m in love with you. I even figured it out on my own.” He let her warmth sink into him, breathed in her nearness.

“It’s very inconvenient,” she whispered into his skin, any force the complaint might have had melted away by the warmth in her voice. “I’m too middle-aged and sensible for this sort of thing.”

“Thirty-nine isn’t middle aged. You’re in your prime. As am I.” He kissed her hair. “It is inconvenient, though. There has to be some way to streamline the process.”

“God help us if there was.” She nuzzled against his shoulder, chuckling. “We’d never have time to weed out the terrible ideas.” Her lips touch his pulse. He was pretty sure tongue was involved, too. “You obviously have thinking to do, and I can’t imagine Clint or Natasha will want to talk tomorrow morning. Call me when you get back to DC. We seem to do our best serious talks over the phone.”

Hands wandering down her body, Phil huffed a laugh. “You have the strangest pillow talk.”

“I self-edit like you wouldn’t believe. You really have no idea.” She nipped his ear and rocked against him lightly. “I once conducted an entire discourse on the stupidity of C minor while a boyfriend of mine was trying to get his rocks off. Unless you want a recitation, you should stop teasing me and start kissing me.”

Tempted as he was to see how long she could keep up a coherent speech, he decided to put it off. Right now he had a beautiful woman to kiss.

Apparently, he did a pretty good job. The room stayed - if not silent - then free of coherent speech until sleep beat out dawn in catching up to them.


	6. Chapter 6

“I had the strangest conversation this morning over breakfast.”

Lola zipped along I-70. It wasn’t the nicest weather out, so her roof was on, and Phil was able to carry on a decent conversation via Bluetooth. He didn’t get enough days when all he had to do was be on call to scrub one on account of rain.

“Oh?” He took a long curve of highway with rather more speed than road conditions advised, but this far from the District there was hardly traffic and Lola had excellent traction.

Hadyah’s soft, warm laughter spilled through the cabin. “You’re not going to ask ‘who did you have over last night, that you were talking over breakfast?’ I’m offended. Obviously you don’t care about me anymore.”

A smile played on his lips. “Sorry. Habit. A good open-ended question always gets more interesting information. Sometimes all you need is an ‘oh.’” A crosswind tried to buffet Lola’s frame, and he corrected so automatically he only really noticed the shiver under his fingers. “So, who did you have over for breakfast?”

“Your rabid jealousy leaves a lot to be desired.” Her laughter dissolved into quiet giggles. “But in point of fact, I slept alone last night and expected to eat breakfast the same way. Then, just as my tea was steeping, my phone rings with an unknown number. I pick up, and it’s your boyfriend-slash-possibly-unrequited-love asking me if I know any good Russian comfort dishes he can make for Natasha. At least, that’s what he wound up asking me. I think he had something else in mind, but he didn’t get around to it before he hung up.”

If he could have done so without letting go of the steering wheel, Phil would have facepalmed. Most of the time Clint was as distant as his codename suggested, whether he used silence or mission-only communication as a cover. Getting past that had taken Phil years. Probably he could count the number of people who ever knew what was going on in Clint’s head on one hand.

And then, sometimes, Clint would do some sideways acrobatic maneuver that left everyone, except usually Natasha, dumbfounded. Like, apparently, calling Phil’s girlfriend to talk about Russian comfort food.

Or rather, to not talk about feelings. Except he clearly had intended to talk about something, because high-level SHIELD agents? Casual personal contact was not a thing.

Besides, Phil knew for a fact that Clint’s contact list included people who were a lot better qualified to answer questions about Russian cuisine than Hadyah.

“Wow.” He paused. “He hasn’t done something like that in a while.”

“When I last heard something like that from a man I was dating - about his ex-girlfriend, in that case -  I was about ten hours from having my tires slashed and the word ‘slut’ spray-painted on my lawn. Should I be worried?” Hadyah was pretty good at sounding casual, but Phil could hear the tension in her voice go up about seven notches.

Oh. Fuck. For some reason - love-wrought stupidity, probably - it hadn’t even occurred to Phil that Clint’s ability to shoot a guy through the eye at a kilometer could be terrifying to Hadyah. Not that she knew that, particularly, but she knew Clint worked for the government in an un-uniformed and dangerous capacity. That was enough to make anyone nervous, especially if she thought Clint was jealous.

Especially since he probably was. Phil winced.

“No. Clint won’t hurt you,” he assured Hadyah. “I’m sorry. I should have made that clear earlier.”  

“Phil?” Her voice was quiet and gentle, and there was a ruefulness to it now. “When you’re trying to reassure me, it helps if you don’t sound nervous yourself.”

“I’m nervous for me, not you,” he said, a quiet, worried sort of amusement tinging his voice. “He can be obnoxiously passive-aggressive when feelings are involved, but that will all be reserved for me.” There. Hopefully that was better. Reassuring people was so much easier when you had a Quinjet or specialist agent to put between them and the threat.

“If you start turning up with unexplained bruises and refusing to see someone about it, we’re going to have to reevaluate our relationship,” she said, and the lack of give in her voice took him by surprise. There was something raw and scarred there, under the calm.

Checking the mirrors, he pulled to the shoulder and cut the engine. This was going to need all his attention.

“That’s not going to happen.” Well, theoretically it could, but the likelihood was slim to none. Probably examining the worst-case scenario wasn’t a good idea because while re-assignment would be easy, Clint would make a terrifying stalker if he decided to be one. On the other hand, Phil could handle that, but that would mean acknowledging that he himself was pretty scary when he wanted to be. He needed another hand.

“I know my boundaries, Hadyah. Clint respects them, and even if he didn’t, I can take care of myself.” Getting in that narrow overlap of ‘vague’ and ‘reassuring’ was tricky.

“No macho bullshit,” she warned him softly. “If he - or Natasha, or anyone - puts a hand on you in a violent way, you get counseling and whatever passes your agency for a restraining order. Period. No arguments.”

If he were honest with himself, it did sting his masculine pride a bit, but not enough to protest. Especially since the idea of either or both of his lovers coming after him made him want to find a good, remote, secret base and lie low for a decade or so.

“Agreed.”

“Good.” He could practically hear her shoulders relax. “Thank you, Phil. I’ll try not to worry I’m going to come home to the secret government agent equivalent of eggs on my door.”

Telling her that he would cheerfully perform extraordinary rendition on anyone who tried was probably not good.

“So,” she said into the momentary silence, “I take it that your talk with him about us and your feelings about him wasn’t entirely productive?”

A snort turned into a laugh. “Even calling it a talk would be overly generous. He’s done some silent treatment and some wounded puppy expressions, but every time I try to actually talk he finds somewhere else to be.” Sparring with Natasha, or being briefed, or, Phil was at least partially certain, examining the insides of the HVAC system. If he ever got proof of that one he was going to give it to Natasha. Her laughing at Clint would be a better punishment than Phil having to expend even more energy.

“I’ve had boyfriends like that. A couple of girlfriends, too.” Hadyah’s tone turned sympathetic. “Never both at once, fortunately. Are you just going to have to wait him out, or is cornering him and demanding he act like an adult in your future?”

Phil ran his thumb over the knobs of the leather-trimmed steering wheel. “The second. Normally I wouldn’t enable his attention-seeking behaviors but this is too important to wait on.” Especially, he added silently, since the nine or so weeks of no sex with Clint was starting to wear on him.

Until she could be sure about her feelings on the matter, Hadyah couldn’t give him an answer on whether or not she wanted exclusivity. So even though she hadn’t asked it of him - had, in fact, told him she was fine with him bedding whoever he wanted until they actually made an agreement - Phil had decided to try it. He’d rather know what a monogamous lifestyle with Hadyah was like before any long-term decisions were forced.

“You’re really very charming when you’re impatient.” He could hear her smiling. “It makes me want to sit you down with a bottle of wine and relax you.”

He smiled. “I’m going to hold you to that one of these days.”

“You can hold me to anything you want,” she teased him, then paused in a very audible way and sighed. “I have to practice today, and my alarm is telling me that my dawdling time is up. Tell me you love me? I’m trying to get used to hearing it again.”

“I love you.” The feeling that the words had knocked him slightly off center wasn’t as strong as it had been the first dozen or so times, but they still quickened his pulse with the implications. He liked both feelings, of course - he wouldn’t have become an agent of SHIELD if he didn’t enjoy thrills.

He listened to her breathing for a moment, remembering the way her emotions had flickered over her face when he’d said it on her doorstep - pleasure, comfort, nervous echoes of bad memories, wistful amusement. “I love you, too,” she finally murmured. “It still feels like I’ve mislaid all my good sense. But for the moment, I think I like it. Call me tonight before you go to sleep?”

The feeling of warmth in his chest when she said it back, on the other hand, only seemed to be getting stronger. “Count on it.”

“Well, then.” She chuckled softly. “Give Lola my love, and remind Clint not to use too much paprika.” Then she hung up on him, leaving him smiling like an idiot. That seemed to happen a lot. He was totally okay with that.

Starting the Chevy again, he would have some time during the drive back to strategize how to get Clint where he wanted him. Luckily, he’d figured it out in the first five miles, and had the rest of the highway unfolding ahead of him.

* * *

The line clicked on, sending background noise and the sound of someone’s heavy breathing. Nat’s, Clint was pretty sure. He opened the staff room’s kitchen cupboard and fished out the last of the coffee.

A few seconds passed before she spoke. “Can this wait? I’m a little busy.”

“Bad time?”

“Not very, if it’s you. Just need a minute.” There was the distinct crunch of someone’s bones breaking. From Natasha’s breathing, definitely not hers. Where the hell were the coffee filters? They couldn’t be out. Hill had officially assigned it to someone’s task list after the Great Coffee Shortage of ‘07.

“I’ll wait.” It wasn’t the first time they’d put each other on hold during a mission. Not by a long shot. He’d listened to her disarm a nuclear missile once, which was less exciting than you’d think. Mostly it had sounded like Natasha being stressed out with a background of a few faint clinks and snips.

This was a fairly typical series of grunts, thuds, crunches, cries of pain, and the occasional gunshot, with his girlfriend’s heavy breathing layered over everything. Apparently the filters had gotten wedged in a drawer. He managed to get one out without tearing it. The drawer didn’t make out so well.

“I have a contender,” Natasha said when her breathing steadied. “Someone just tried to kill me with a rail. From a railroad.”

He paused with the bag hovering over the percolator. “What? How big a piece? Did they use a crane or something?”

“Full length. Bare hands. I think he was hopped up on something. But it gets better.” Natasha gave him a beat or two to hang in suspense. “He brought it with him.”

“Christ. Maybe you should just wait for his spine to liquify.”

“One-two to the groin and nose. Apparently not that pain resistant. But really - a rail. He even sharpened it like a big metal spear.”

“I think you win this month, then,” he conceded, grin on his face. Opponent with Weirdest Weapon(s) was an on-going game they’d been playing since a mob thug in Singapore had jumped Clint with a meat fork and a hot curling iron. The minor burn had been worth the story.

Natasha chuckled. She sounded genuinely amused. “I was trying to decide if it bumped off the pot of fresh curry in Calcutta or not. I mean, the curry was less obviously dangerous but the rail took so much more work.... Anyway, why did you call?”

Clicking the lid into place and starting the brewing cycle, Clint went to lean against the window. “Uh. So. The new interrogation rooms are secure. Really secure.”

“H.H. locked you in one, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. I guess he didn’t want to repeat the thing with the air ducts.”

Natasha started humming ‘Just You Wait, Henry Higgins’ under her breath. The window was pleasantly cool against his forehead. “Shut up,” he said.

“So did he get you to talk, or did he have to resort to enhanced interrogation? Did he bring out the Grateful Dead recordings?”

Clint rolled his eyes. He and Natasha had a nearly telepathic connection at this point, so it was fifty-fifty she knew. “No. I’m not that much of a child.” She snorted delicately. “Mostly. Anyway, apparently I freaked out his girlfriend. It’s not like I meant to.” There was a silence that almost certainly involved Tash raising an eyebrow skeptically. “Okay, much. But not as bad as she was. So he was pissed about that.”

“You wanted, what, more ‘I’ll be watching you’ and less _Silence of the Lambs_? You do remember that she’s a civilian, right? One sec... keep talking. Need to jigger a security console. Going to have tools in my mouth.”

Clint sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Not like I’m the only one to ever overkill on a social interaction.” It had seemed much funnier when it had been Sitwell getting taken to the cleaners about his ‘I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse’ call to a restaurant he wanted tables at. Thank God Clint hadn’t actually said anything incriminating. “So Coulson chewed me out on that one, I apologized - well, for me - and then he pulls out the big guns.”

“Mpph.” Which was Natasha for _How interesting._ _And what did you two talk about?_ It was actually only slightly different from when she made the same inquiry while she was blowing him. Which was a sensory association he could have done without just now.

Of course, trying to find the right words for the occasion was helping. Feelings were one of the least sexy things in Clint’s book.

“Well, he wanted to know what my problem is. Reasonable, I guess.” More than reasonable, but one of the nice things about Natasha knowing almost everything was that she didn’t feel the need to call him on semantics. “So I said I wasn’t too happy about his bout of selective celibacy.”

“Hmng.” _And how did that go over?_

“He told me he loved me. And then he wanted to talk about feelings, and I didn’t have enough explosives for the interrogation room walls on me.”

There was a moment of silence, except for the sound of Natasha getting the tools out of her mouth as quickly as possible without dropping them. “So is this the _Parent Trap_ talk we’re having now?”

“Do you think that would work?” Damn, he sounded awkwardly hopeful even to himself.

Tash sighed. “How long do you want him to stay angry with us?”

He glanced at the coffee maker hopefully. A little less than half a cup was in the carafe. Damn.

“Less than a decade?”

“Then no, it will not.” Natasha shifted in a way that he heard in her breathing. “Stubborn door. There. He seems extremely fond of her.”

“How much more than a decade are we talking?” Her eyebrow was going up again. “Right, okay. Nevermind. But why her? He’s not even that into music.” He’d heard recordings of her playing - easy enough to get - and Clint had to admit that Hadyah was good at her job, but she wasn’t great. Certainly not the way Natasha was great at everything that didn’t involve civilian life, or the way he himself was a great shot. So that left other talents to evaluate, and he had. But she was only okay in pretty much every other respect, and Phil was woozy over her anyway. Totally baffling.

“I don’t think music has much to do with it. Apparently they don’t even talk about music that much. Especially hers. Their last long call mostly involved talking about salmon.” There was a momentary pause. “We were bugging the flight for other reasons.”

Clint’s lips turned upwards ever so slightly. _You keep telling yourself that, babe._

“I can express a sudden interest in internal accounting if I want to,” she sniffed.

“‘Course you can,” Clint affirmed. “And I guess that means that I have even less to go on.”

“Do you think that maybe it’s because she’s, you know, ordinary?” Natasha sounded a little uncertain herself. “Not ordinary-stupid or ordinary-boring but... goes to the grocery store and walks in the park and doesn’t know how to defuse explosives.”

Clint had his own opinions about Hadyah’s intelligence and boringness, but those got squashed by the great big anvil of realization. It was probably the sort of thing that the lower-level agents would’ve spotted right away - the appeal of a quote-unquote normal life. Him and Tash? They’d never been close to ordinary. Phil had - he’d grown up in Boston, gone to public schools, had a bike and a prom date and sometimes fights that stopped when someone got a bloody nose. And he’d been missing it. It was something Clint couldn’t provide, couldn’t even really understand. When he’d been a kid in the circus, Clint had wondered what it was like. Sometimes envied it. But never understood. Not really.

“Yeah. Shit.”

Natasha didn’t say anything for a good long while. Just got on with the mission with Clint in her ear, also saying nothing. “What are you worrying about?” she finally whispered.

He let out a long, quiet breath. The coffee machine filled the silence.

“Y’know. The usual. That he’ll decide he likes ordinary more than amazing. Get a desk job. Retire.”  

She snorted softly. “The man with the flying car? He loves his work too much.” That the two of them went right along with his work went unsaid. “She’s the new collector’s item. It’ll wear off.”

And that was definitely Natasha blowing something off because she didn’t want to contemplate the alternative. Clint wasn’t so sure about it, but at the moment he wasn’t going to call her on it. He didn’t want to think about it, either.

“Besides,” Natasha said as he heard her tapping away at keys in the way that meant she was stealing something, “I’ve been looking up her ex-boyfriends and girlfriends. Her average relationship length over time is worse than the average duration of those ETA cells.”

“So, four, six months tops?” Damn, he sounded almost cheerful. He’d have to make sure that tone and subject never came out together when Phil was around. “You do the best recon, babe.”

“Among other things.” Natasha was grinning, he just knew it. “I learned a new trick in Brazil. Want to be my test pilot so I can be sure I’ve got it? I want to blow Professor Higgins’ mind with it when I get the chance.”

Clint’s stomach did an awful flip-flop that he wrestled into submission. He didn’t know how long it would be - if ever - before the three of them wound up in bed together again.

 _Think about the sexy,_ Barton, he told himself. Which was a first. Usually he had the opposite problem.

“When,” Natasha said in his ear, much more quietly. The way she talked about a mission she was going to bring off one way or another.

Clint let out a breath. “Yeah.” Then he rummaged for a mug and put on a grin. “So, any hints about this new technique? Does it involve toys?”

“Text you later. On the clock for exfil. Also, a bunch of thugs with guns are trying to kill me now.” Natasha heaved a sigh. “Boring, but requires attention. Talk later.”

She hung up just as he found a mug that looked like it wouldn’t give him sepsis.

The coffee was cheap and a little off its sell-by date, but hot and fresh and full of caffeine. Whichever agent was in charge would go un-disciplined for another day.

He wondered if he’d get Natasha’s texts before he sorted through his stack of analyst reports for the day. Probably depended on the number of guards with guns. Thirty or less would probably mean he’d have to try not to be distracted by his hard-on while he worked.

Well, there were worse things.


	7. Chapter 7

He’d been sorting intelligence reports on a possible alien incursion in the Middle East and thinking about lunch when his phone had trilled an alert to let him know he had a text from Hadyah. Phil finished the report he was working on before he picked it up and glanced at it, then nearly dropped the phone.

_Looking at plane tickets. Could be there by six. Dinner and a show? Stacy Brooks is playing the Blues Alley tonight._

He paused for all of a second to double-check his agenda. No missions tonight, no dinners. _Sounds wonderful._

After they’d nailed down the details, he pocketed his phone with a smile. Lunch. Definitely lunch. Concentrating during the afternoon was going to be difficult. Fortunately, he was an agent of SHIELD. He could handle difficult.

At that particular moment, he’d felt like he could handle anything.

The afternoon had gone by surprisingly fast once he found his workflow again, and he’d picked Hadyah up at the airport a couple of minutes later than he meant to. When he tried to apologize, she’d just laughed and gestured down at the evening dress she was wearing and winked. “You don’t think I wore this on the plane, did you?”

He’d been forced to admit that, looking at her, the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. That had given him at least twenty minutes of her intermittent laughter while he dropped her bags off with the doorman of his building (who also happened to be with SHIELD security) and drove to the club on Wisconsin Avenue where Hadyah had tickets and a table waiting for them. They had fried shrimp, salad, baked salmon and crab cakes, and the eight o’clock show was as wonderful as Hadyah had made it out to be. The way she smiled, the way her eyes focused completely on the stage while the band played, the way she _gave_ herself to the music....

Well, he was just glad that the traffic back to his apartment had been reasonable. He wasn’t sure how long his composure would have held out, otherwise.

“You know,” Hadyah murmured into his mouth as she pushed him up against his door and kissed him again, “I think the jazz scene in DC is worth visiting more often.”

Barely working his keys out of his pocket, he held her close and returned the kiss. “Yes,” and another kiss, “definitely. Complete agreement.” Actually getting the keys in the lock, on the other hand, went remarkably smoothly for working by feel; the door was open before he’d begun their next kiss.

Clint sat frozen on the couch, a Dorito halfway to his mouth, in nothing but an undershirt and boxers. Phil stopped dead, Hadyah’s hands still under his shirt, taking in details of the scene in no particular order. Two empty beer bottles were sitting on the floor within Clint’s reach, another half-full bottle wedged between two seat cushions. A tall pair of black combat boots were lying in the hallway. The room smelled faintly of pizza, and Netflix was playing what sounded like a comedy.

“You left your television on,” Hadyah murmured into his neck. “Do you do that often? Is it a comfort thing?”

“No,” Phil answered, a little louder than he meant to. Clint still looked like a deer in the headlights, but he at least dropped the chip back into the bag. Next would be the frantic search for an escape route.

“Phil,” Natasha called as she breezed in from the bedroom with one of his notebooks in hand, “you need to practice your spelling. ‘Glamorous’ only has one ‘m’. Also, I think your girlfriend is more like the proverbial rail than Audrey Hepburn.”

Hadyah stopped moving so completely that he wasn’t entirely sure she was breathing.

“Oh, no.” Phil brought his hand to his face in the hope that, when he took it away again, a dark, empty apartment would meet his eyes. “This is not happening.” He could still hear the TV. And Clint’s desire to be anywhere else. And Natasha dropping his journal. “There’s no place like home.”

“Clearly,” Hadyah murmured, carefully beginning the process of extracting her hands from his clothes and her body from against his.

“Uh. Hi.” Clint was looking everywhere but at Phil or Hadyah. The Doritos bag crinkled. “We, uh. Thought we’d drop by.”

“ _Yóbanny v rot,_ ” Natasha muttered under her breath, bending down to pick up the journal. Given that she was wearing her field gear unzipped almost to the navel, that was a little distracting. Fortunately, Phil was too busy fending off panic to gawk.

“Hadyah, I’m so sorry,” he said, because starting with an apology never hurt.

“Shut up,” she told him, her voice gentle and polite but not at all inviting discussion. “Sit down. All of you. Anyone who tries to flee the room, I will personally find a way to beat to death with a beaded clutch. Does everyone understand? Don’t say anything. Nod for yes.”

Swearing to himself in as many languages as he knew, Phil nodded, then sat down on the love seat with the crisp efficiency he would have used walking into Director Fury’s office expecting a reprimand. Clint made the bottles and chips disappear in less than a second, and Phil wondered if he was going to rediscover them sometime later. In the ceiling crawlspace, maybe.

Natasha just sat down on the floor cross-legged. She didn’t even zip up her uniform.

Hadyah took a very deep breath, let it go, then did it again. “I am going to the bathroom to splash water on my face,” she said in a very measured voice, “and then we are going to sit down like adults and discuss important, adult things like boundaries and personal space and relationship expectations. Do not talk among yourselves. Do not text. Do not use super-spy hand signals. Just sit and do absolutely nothing until I get back.”

She turned, started down the hall - stepping over Clint’s boots in the process - and started opening doors until she found the bathroom. Stopped. Stared. Very slowly, very carefully closed the door and leaned her head against it.

Somehow, the quiet from Clint took on an alarmed quality. Well, more alarmed.

“Is there or is there not a set of body armor, a bow and two quivers of arrows with some weird mechanical design sitting in your bathroom, Phil?”

He glared at Clint. They’d talked about the importance of cleaning up after oneself before. The archer tried, partially successfully, to get smaller. What was he doing? Storing some of his mass in the couch?

“Yes,” Phil called. “Yes, there is.”

“Please tell me,” Hadyah murmured without lifting her head from the door, “that they are not now and have never been yours.”

Well, there had been the time Clint’s armor had gotten destroyed by some weird acid and he’d had to use Phil’s. Had it been replaced since then? Either way, he knew the right answer to this one.

“No.” With some effort, he kept his mouth shut. Saying as little as possible was a good idea under any kind of duress. Especially when he wanted to explain everything as fast as possible.

“Good.” Hadyah took another very deep breath, coughed softly, then glared at the door. Walked to the kitchen, ran the sink for a minute, then came out with a glass of water. “Mister Barton,” she said, still using that terrifyingly mild voice, “civilized people put their used clothing somewhere it can be washed as soon as possible so as not to make the air unbreathable by other people.”

Sitting up straighter, Clint opened his mouth as if to protest, caught the look on Phil’s and Natasha’s faces, and deflated again. “Yes, ma’am,” he grunted. He gave Phil a sullen look. Probably because the bathroom actually was the best place to wash armor outside a SHIELD armory.

His position would probably have been stronger if he’d actually washed it.

“Thank you.” Hadyah folded her legs, adjusted her skirt, sipped her water and generally seemed to be trying to compose herself into looking as pretty and organized as possible. Phil had done that with his suits before. It was a good way to ward off panic or incandescent rage. Natasha started to say something, and Hadyah just gave her a look. Natasha shut up again.

After a few more seconds, Hadyah suddenly became very interested in the ceiling. “Natasha,” she said, voice much tighter and a little higher in pitch than before, “would you mind zipping up, please?”

The Russian’s eyes widened just a tiny bit - the equivalent of going bug-eyed, for Natasha - and she immediately complied. Was that red in her cheeks? Dear god. If he survived this, Phil was going to have to commemorate the occasion somehow.

Hadyah waited another thirty seconds or so, risked a look and then visibly relaxed. “Thank you. Now, I don’t care which one of you answers this as long as it isn’t Phil - do you have keys, or do you just routinely break into his apartment when you aren’t sure if he’s here or not?”

The look shared between Clint and Natasha spoke volumes. Mostly about how screwed they were, but with a rapidly developed and discarded escape plan and a short argument. It was Clint who drew the short straw. “It’s more like ...consensual infiltration.”

“I see.” Hadyah tapped her fingertips against her water glass for what seemed like a very long time before she turned and looked at Phil. Her expression made him feel about an inch high, which set off some countering anger. “When were you going to tell me about this particular form of fun and games?”

“Originally, before you came over for the first time. Today was more spontaneous than expected and it slipped my mind.” He refused to look away or feel sheepish. It was his home, after all. Who came there or didn’t was his choice.

“You didn’t think the detail that your lovers have a habit of breaking into places without a key might have had some relevance to my concerns the other day?” Her voice stayed very calm, but there was a flatness to it now. She was controlling it very, very tightly.

Of course. Phil’s anger melted away. “No. It really is consensual. They don’t have keys because...” he looked between Clint and Natasha. Both looked variations of miserable, but neither shied away when he started to explain. He pressed on. “Because it meant they didn’t have to think of our arrangement as a domestic thing. Because they enjoy the challenge. Because I like the surprise.”

Clint actually looked up at him, and his expression was startled. Natasha just looked at her hands. Had either of them given any more thought to it than he had? It was just something that had happened, a day at a time, like vines pushing up through a sidewalk.

Hadyah studied his face, then theirs, then her hands. SHIELD training or not, he couldn’t begin to tell what she was thinking.

“Phil trusts you,” she finally said, still looking at her glass, “but I’m not sure that I do. He’s a good man, but he’s also got a blind spot for people he cares about. I like that when it’s me. When it’s a couple of people who can lie to my face without me knowing, break into a secure building routinely without being noticed and probably run a mile in five minutes flat, I’m not sure I feel the same way. He wants to keep sleeping with both of you. He misses you. I don’t want to get in the middle of that, but I also don’t know how to feel as much as I do about Phil and not trust the people he’s sleeping with. I thought I was coming out here tonight to have a nice evening and shake some of this stuff out of my head, and instead the universe has decided to make a point of the fact that you two are something I can’t put off. You’re here. I either need to find a way to live with you or decide there’s no future with him, and right now I don’t even know if the two of you would be happier if a car ran me down in the street. So you’ll have to excuse me if what I’m thinking about right now - not wanting, not choosing, but thinking very hard about - is running out that door and never speaking to any of you again.”

The silence that followed almost vibrated.

“Get my psych profile.” Clint’s voice was quiet, but firm. “I know you have a copy, Phil, or can get it on you laptop. Get it and show it to Hadyah.”

“That,” Natasha murmured without lifting her eyes from her own hands, “would be illegal. Not to mention that his girlfri... that Hadyah is trying very hard not to know about our work. Which is all over your file. Besides, I’ve seen the confidential parts of your file. It won’t make her feel better.”

“Speaking of illegal,” Phil muttered.

“So have I,” Clint shot back. “And she already knows I’m dangerous. The profile will show her that SHIELD, at least, is confident I won’t start shooting civilians or go totally off-book.”

“Except when it comes to me.” Natasha finally looked up at him, her lips very set, and now it was Clint’s turn to suddenly get very interested in his hands.

Hadyah looked both of them over for a minute, then went back to Phil. “When we were discussing boundaries for Natasha,” she said softly, “did you not think about him or just figure you could handle it without telling me?”

Phil pursed his lips. “I was getting to Clint when you insisted I talk about my own feelings.”

Her mouth twitched, and suddenly she was smiling. “I kind of thought the unspoken implication ‘if one of these things is potentially life-threatening, I should mention it’ went without needing to be said. Obviously my life is less interesting than yours.”

Phil opened his mouth. Closed it. Shrugged helplessly. “Maybe a little.”

“What boundaries about Natasha?” Clint, bolt upright, was looking at the two of them narrowly. Especially Phil. “Exactly what were you two talking about?”

“Whether one or both of them was going to sleep with me, I imagine.” Natasha gave him a roll of her eyes that suggested he was being dense. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Well... no. Okay. If that’s all.” He settled back onto the couch, beefy arms still crossed over equally-muscular chest.

“She wanted to know how I would feel if she fell in love with Natasha,” Phil said quietly. “Or vice versa.”

For a second Phil thought Clint was going to try and throttle him, and then Agent Barton burst out laughing. “Hell of an imagination you got there, Hadyah.”

“I have my moments.” Hadyah’s smile was a little taut, on the edge of being insulted. “But I also have a lot of experience in not thinking things through before getting into them. It seemed prudent to at least talk about.”

Clint didn’t roll his eyes in the way that conveyed he really wanted to. “So now we have to sit through thought-experiments because you got burned?”

Natasha spoke up so quietly that Phil had opened his mouth to tell Clint to knock it off already when he registered the words. “What if I did?”

Eyes snapping to Natasha, Clint bristled as if all the tension in the room had poured into him. The last time Phil had seem him this on edge, they’d been on the wrong side of an actual artillery strike.

“What?” Clint’s voice sounded like grit in a machine. “You can’t be serious.”

Natasha didn’t move. That wasn’t what started adrenaline churning through Phil’s guts - it was the way she didn’t move, the total stillness and the watchful eyes. He’d seen a zoologist do that in the presence of a venomous snake once. “I’m not saying....” she paused, pressed her lips together, started again. “Contingencies. If you can’t rule it out, plan for it. Basics, Clint. We forget the basics, we deserve what happens to us. Right?”

She may as well have slipped a knife between his ribs, the way he flinched and gave a strangled grunt. His face was absolute devastation before the rage took over.

“Yeah. I guess I forgot the most basic thing: don’t trust anyone.” He was halfway down the hall and grabbing his boots off the floor before anyone could react.

“Clint.” It was Hadyah who was on her feet, talking, shaking off the shock first. Which part of Phil’s brain knew made sense, because she was least close to Clint and of course his anger would hit her less. Another part was professionally offended that SHIELD emotional duress training was clearly so far below spec. Most of him was just trying to remember how speaking worked. “They care about you. You care about them. Running out just means it’ll be harder to come back later when you want to work things out. Don’t make a mistake you’re going to regret later.”

“Fuck you.” Clint spun to face Hadyah, voice rising with each sentence. “You think you know what’s best for me? You think I can’t make good decisions when I’m pissed off? Too damn many of my decisions get made when I’m angry and I’m pretty damn good at it.” Even yelling and gesturing wildly he hadn’t, Phil noted, moved an inch from where he was standing. Usually Clint paced all over when he had a blow-up. Apparently he had some control left. Hadyah wasn’t moving either - wasn’t backing up or trying to move into his space, was just standing there with a calmness on her face that looked totally genuine if you couldn’t see how pale her knuckles were where they gripped the glass. “You waltzed in and took Phil, and now you want me to sit quietly while you talk about taking Natasha, too? Fuck you, lady.”

He stalked to the bathroom, snagging his boots as he went, and the sound of zippers and buckles being slapped together filled the silence. Clint was going to leave.

“Shit.” Obvious, but Phil needed something to start the flow of words again. He went to stand just outside the bathroom. Hadyah, her body visibly shaking with the release of tension, got out of his way. He hesitated maybe a fraction of a second before she shook her head and mouthed go, then flashed him a faint smile. Right. Triage. They could talk about it later - maybe in a phone call. If Clint made it out of the building, he didn’t know when he’d see him again. Someone with Hawkeye’s skills and history, it might be days - or it might be years. The archer was already back in his pants and working on the top half of his gear, jaw set and face flushed.

“She didn’t take me, Clint. I’m still here.”

“Like hell.” He let the reinforced jacket hang open and jammed his foot in a boot. “Whatever. When you’re done with your mid-life crisis, then we can fucking ‘talk about it.’”

Phil rocked back on his heels, jaw tightening. “Is that what you think this is about? Really?”

“Well, I admit, if you wanted to be a little more classic you’d have to go with something shorter, younger and curvier. But I guess you make do with what’s handy, right?” Clint grabbed his quiver and pulled it over his shoulder.

“You know, that’s the second time someone’s made a crack about Hadyah’s looks in under an hour.” Phil made his voice deliberately casual, because it beat the adolescent urge to punch Clint in the face. “Not all of us are endowed with figures like you and Natasha.”

The way Clint’s fist came down on the granite counter - the way disappointment flashed across his face - maybe getting punched was what he’d been going for. The set of his jaw said he was done with talking. That was actually probably good - with what was coming out of his mouth, Phil was about done with Clint talking, too.

So Phil kissed him instead, because apparently it was a night for crazy.

Stepping into the archer’s space was like pushing through an electrical field - the anger and hurt and need almost buzzed coming off of Clint and crackled against Phil’s skin. As soon as their mouths met and calloused hands grabbed his waist and shoulder, though, that wild energy grounded itself through Phil.

It was unlike any of their past kisses - not hungry, playful, submissive, tender, or even angry. This? This was desperate, naked, fight-for-your-life need, the way Clint opened and clung to him, all heat and teeth and grabby hands. This was both plea and confession.

This was escalating very, very quickly.

He really ought to think about that. It was probably important. But it had been more than nine weeks since he’d really had Clint’s hands on him and you could only ask so much of a man’s self-discipline.

Whether the fact that they managed to keep it to twenty minutes and a couple of dents in the plaster counted as success or not was a matter of opinion, but Phil was going to take his wins where he could. Endorphins were very helpful to being philosophical.

They were leaning in a tangle against the wall, Clint nuzzling Phil’s throat, Phil watching in the mirror the slowing rise and fall of Clint’s shoulders, the sweat on his skin, his fantastic ass. Even after sex, he wanted to keep looking. Apparently there was no such thing as too much naked archer.

“Well.” Somewhat reluctantly, he let his hand slide from Clint’s hair down to the back of his neck. “That certainly answers the question about our next steps.”

Clint mumbled into his hair in a way that was aiming for smug but wandered off into nervous tension without actually being able to work up the tension. “Go pick up whatever mess your girlfriend left in the front before she left?”

Phil couldn’t help it. He started laughing. “Because we were having sex?”

“Well... yeah.” Clint squeezed him a little harder around the ribs. “In the middle of her big relationship talk and everything.”

Phil snorted. “Well, yeah, she’s probably not thrilled about the timing. I’m not, either, but this is worth it.” He squeezed back. “You’re worth it.”

Clint shifted enough to look at him, eyes searching, and then his lips twitched while he tried not to smile. “Did you really just have sex with me to keep me from leaving? Because that’s kinda Tash’s thing. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“And to think I missed you. Brat.” He worked an arm free to slap Clint’s ass.

Clint actually squawked indignantly. God, he wished he’d had a recorder running - it was that good a sound. He’d have to ask Natasha if there really weren’t any bugs in the apartment - and, if there were, where they’d need to break in to get the files.

Imagining Hadyah’s response to that whole line of thought made him chuckle into Clint’s shoulder. _Maybe a little more interesting, yeah._

As he prodded Clint into the shower and cleaned them both up, he tried not to worry about how she’d take the evening’s events. Terrible idea or not, he was in love with a civilian, and there was no getting around the differences between their lives. The not-exactly-defined relationships he was having with his fellow agents wasn’t even the biggest gap there.

When they got out to the front room and found Hadyah sitting on the loveseat with Natasha, sharing Phil’s booze with the redhead while Natasha lay there with her head in Hadyah’s lap and her eyes mostly closed, he had to admit that he wasn’t sure whether he or Clint was the most surprised person in the room. It was possible that the gap thing might go both ways.

“We raided your cabinet,” Natasha mumbled without opening her eyes. “Did you two have a good time?”

Hadyah snickered. “Are you serious? Since when do men make noise like that if they’re not having a good time?”

Natasha opened her mouth, then yawned. Phil wasn’t sure whether it was just slow or if she’d been about to say something horrible. Then Hadyah reached down and tapped Natasha gently on the nose, and he at least knew what the cellist thought the answer to that question was.

Blushing a little, Natasha grabbed the bottle and then leaned up on her arm to take a slug.

Phil stared.

Clint goggled. “How do you _do_ that?”

“Do what?” Hadyah looked up, face expressively innocent. Phil couldn’t tell if she genuinely didn’t know or was fucking with them a little. He wasn’t sure he could blame her either way.

Clint looked expectantly at Natasha. Natasha raised an eyebrow, took another long drink, and then put the bottle on the table and deliberately rolled onto her side to press her face against the curve of Hadyah’s ribs. The cellist took a slug herself, ran a hand through Natasha’s hair and smiled wryly. “Comfortable down there?”

“Mmmph,” Natasha confirmed.

Maybe it was their years of working - and sleeping - together that translated Clint’s expression. _I either love you or hate you right now,_  it said. _Or both._

Maybe it was the only logical explanation for the half-grin, half-pout the archer was wearing.

“Not leaving, then?” Hadyah asked Clint, voice light and gentle.

Clint just shrugged. “Apparently not.”

“Good.” Hadyah smiled. “I put _It Happened One Night_ up on Netflix. You two should take the couch - I don’t think Natasha wants to move.”

“Seriously? We’re just... I mean, you’re just going to....” Clint trailed off. “Your boyfriend just fucked me in the bathroom and you want to watch a movie?”

“Well, I think he’s going to owe me a trip out to Portland to make up the sex I’m going to be missing tonight, but yeah. That’s about the size of it.” Hadyah leaned forward enough to pick up the bottle, then held it out. “Drink?”

Clint took it like a man trying to wake himself up and knocked back a hefty swallow. “Lady, I think you might be crazier than I am.”

“You know, I think it’s been at least ten years since anyone’s said that to me....” Hadyah grinned impishly. “Obviously, I need to get out more.”

Shaking his head again, Clint gave Phil a particularly plaintive look. _Where did you find this woman?_ it said.

Phil grinned. _You have only begun to suffer,_ it said back. Clint pouted.

“Now,” Phil said, getting comfortable on the sofa, “where’d you stash my Doritos?”


	8. Chapter 8

Finishing a working lunch was not nearly as satisfying as finishing a lunch-lunch, but the impressive stack of paperwork on Phil’s desk only seemed to have gotten bigger since he called out for a sandwich. The fact that he’d spend the morning trying not to worry that Hadyah was deciding never to speak to him again was not helping his patience.

Just as another sheaf was delivered to his in-box by an apologetic-looking courier, he checked his phone. Again. He waited another minute to see if something would happen.

To his pleasant surprise, his screen obligingly lit up and showed him the most recent text. _I can’t believe it’s just 10 am here. Everyone’s so chipper that I just want to hit them with a pillow and then go to sleep on it. How many times did you and Clint and S/L have sex after you put me on the plane?_

Phil chuckled. _Once. The whole office is busy. Glad you made it back safe._

 _Seriously? Just once? :(_  A few seconds went by. _Their debauchery skills are weak._

Now he was laughing, only party from relief. _God, don’t joke. The last time I said something like that, I sprained my wrist and had to spend three days rehydrating._

 _Where were you, a desert?_ Before he could start typing, the phone pinged again. _Don’t answer that._ Another ping. _I’m glad you got your once (today). Hope you’ll still have a kiss left for me._

He felt lighter still. _All the kisses you want._ He paused, considering. _How are you feeling about all this?_

 _Not 160 characters or less._ Not that their texts were limited - SMS sequencing was a big improvement - but he got the point.

 _OK to call? My paperwork can wait._ It might have him staying too late to actually go home tonight, but that was unfortunately not unusual.

_Very okay. Typing horizontally._

He hit the call button. “I’m jealous,” he greeted. “Of you and the bed.”

“It’s okay,” she murmured, voice soft and throaty with tired amusement. “It’s a very quiet love affair. It hasn’t ever tried to love me back.”

“More the fool it,” he smiled. Another courier deflated when Phil locked his office just seconds before receiving yet another ream of things to sign. Agent Coulson smiled and waved through the blinds before closing those, too.

“Charmer.” He heard her roll over in bed, imagined the covers sliding around her. “How was it after I left? Other than, you know, shag-o-rama in miniature.”

“‘Shag-o-rama’?” he winced. “Did they make you watch Austin Powers on the flight or something? I can have them audited.”

“Really? Because they didn’t give me a second pillow even when I asked for one....” she trailed off in that way that was definitely deliberate, then chuckled. “Stop dialing the other line. Abuse of power can wait for another day. But really, how was it?”

Leaning on his window, he looked out over the Potomac. It was a nice view when he had the time to look at it.

“They were pretty obviously trying to remind me of what I’d been missing.” Which was, okay, some of the most intense, acrobatic, highly-skilled sex he’d had in his life. Add the emotional intensity to that, and it was beyond good. “And I had missed it.”

“I can imagine. If sex was an Olympic sport, they’d medal.” Any other woman he’d ever dated - hell, most of the women he’d known who could follow the implication - would have sounded cutting or defensive or just unhappy. Hadyah sounded like he was discussing a nice theme park he’d visited. Not for the first time, it threw him more than a little.

That, and the mental images of x-rated bobsledding.

“Um.” He waited. No clarity was forthcoming from either himself or Hadyah. “You seem remarkably okay with this. It worries me a little.”

She sighed and rolled in the bed again. Probably staring at the ceiling. She did that when she didn’t want to look at anything in particular except maybe the projected stars. “If you mean I’m remarkably okay with you having sex with two cover models for Super-Spy Monthly, I guess I am. I can’t really decide if it’s a blow to my ego that there’s no way I can possibly compete or a serious boost that you want time in my bed at all, so I kinda write it off as a wash. Besides, I give myself good odds of eventually getting video, and that’s going to be priceless.” Another chuckle, the one that said she was only sort of joking. “The emotional side worries me more. But when people make music together like you three do, getting in the middle of that is a bad idea.”

Music. That would never have been Phil’s metaphor for the situation, but it fit in an odd way. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a bead on the situation sooner. I hate sending people in without a good briefing.”

“Now we’re both talking about work.” Another quiet sigh. “I like them. Well, I like Natasha and I want to give Clint a blanket and some soup and a little handbook on how to be an adult. But I don’t like the feeling of auditioning. There’s a reason I’m still in Portland. If I have to take all three of you to have you, I don’t know if either of us is going to like my answer. That’s not meant to be ominous - I really don’t know.”

Phil fiddled with the glass and steel pressure dial - part of Howard Stark’s Vita-Ray machine - he used as a paperweight. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, either. I hate that.” He cut off another metaphor about ops logistics before it could go totally off the rails. The only time he’d allowed that to happen, he’d wound up getting all the way to extraction points before Hadyah had taken mercy and shut him up.

“Natasha keeps trying to kiss me. Well, to get drunk and then kiss me.” Hadyah’s voice was wistful. “I think I’m eventually going to let her. I’d like to live through that.”

Phil decided against assuring her that the poison lipstick was only for a very small range of missions. That would not be helpful. “If she weren’t drunk, would you feel differently?”

“Yes.” She didn’t even have to think about it, apparently. Or had been thinking about it a lot. “I’d be a lot more likely to say yes, and a lot more nervous about the morning after. Especially about you. I mean, the worst Clint is going to do is kill me, right? You might break my heart.”

She was probably trying to make a joke, but it didn’t come off. Hopefully she couldn’t hear his wince over the phone.

“After last night? I don’t think I’d be so worried about you and Natasha. Assuming sobriety.”

“If I’d known letting your drunk girl-on-the-side nuzzle my ribs for a night was going to make you feel so much better, I’d have suggested it earlier.” She was smiling when she said it. “For the record, you look pretty good with Clint’s head on your shoulder, but I’m still not kissing him.”

Phil laughed. “Don’t worry. I think he’s convinced you have cooties.”

“Well, I think he’s got too much frog and not enough prince, so I guess that makes us even.” She chuckled along with him. “I love your laugh. And I think I can put up with your boyfriend if he doesn’t do the drama-queen thing too much when we’re supposed to be having you-and-me time. And doesn’t stalk me.”

“I love you,” Phil replied, carefully not mentioning that Natasha was the more likely - and more skilled - stalker of the two. “And I’m taking steps regarding the drama.” Mostly the plan revolved around more sex, but with Clint that took care of a lot.

“Good. I swear, I’ve had boyfriends with girlfriends who were much less catty.” She went quiet for a few seconds, then started chuckling. “Have you ever thought about putting him in a dress?”

“Dress? No,” Phil grinned. “He looks great in a bustier, though.”

She laughed. It came out warm and clean and bright. “Phil Coulson, you are the most interesting man I think I’ve ever dated - and believe me, that takes in a lot of ground. Let’s just try to keep the level of interesting down for the next couple of months?”

He mentally checked the master calendar. There were a few medium-duration missions for both Hawkeye and Widow coming up, so there would (theoretically) be time for Phil to go be normal in Portland a few times without having to argue with Clint. On top of the times he’d probably go and would have to.

“Projections look good.”

“If I don’t get out of bed, I’m going to fall asleep and be jetlagged,” Hadyah murmured, “but I don’t want to. I just want to stay here and keep talking to you until I go back to dreaming of your arms around me like I was on the plane. God, I sound like a lovesick teenager. Why are you letting me keep talking?”

“Because it’s adorable,” he grinned. “I wish we could keep talking, too, but there’s a courier outside who looks like he might go find someone with clearance to pry me out of here. That, or give me puppy eyes through the blinds.” Actually, the kid had been doing that for a few minutes now. Apparently someone was on his ass to get to Phil’s out-box. “I love you, Hadyah. Get up, go for a walk, practice, make fun of some hipsters.”

“Mmm. Hipsters.” She groaned as she sat up. “When you’re here next, I’m going to spoil you for putting up with this every time you come up to see me. There may be cupcakes and frosting involved.”

“The pineapple-spice ones you made that one time?” Christ, now he sounded like a teenager. “With the cream-cheese frosting?”

“Just for you.” She didn’t even sound like she was teasing him. “I love you. Go be indispensable. And hang up, because I seem to be incapable of doing it. I blame you.”

“I couldn’t possibly comment. We will investigate these allegations promptly. Take care.” And then he hung up. It only took him three tries to find the button; Hadyah wasn’t the only one it was hard for.

He even managed to put the phone way without thinking too hard about calling her back. Which counted as progress, apparently. Maybe he’d talk to Science about the possibility of a cure for hormonally-driven obsessive behavior.

Then again, he wasn’t sure he wanted one. Love was enabling like that.


	9. Chapter 9

Phil Coulson was extracting his bag from the carousels at PDX - which was harder than some of the actual extractions he’d conducted - when a hand touched his arm and a woman’s voice slipped through the noise.

“I wasn’t sure I was ever actually going to see you again, lover,” Hadyah Savchenko told him, voice carefully light with amusement. “When I said I understood if work was going to take you away for a while, I didn’t mean _this_ understanding.”

Phil kissed her before doing anything else. She was warm and soft and wearing her trademark perfume, and she made the chaos of the airport completely unimportant and made him feel 50% more human than he had in the last several weeks of his three-month marathon of assignments. If he never had to talk to another eccentric genius mechanical engineer or astrophysicist it would be too soon.

The fact that Hadyah’s skirt suit was in a nice shade of turquoise and very much not SHIELD or Fortune 500 black was also extremely refreshing.

“God, I missed you,” he said into her hair. “Why does the world need saving so often?”

She just hugged him, kissing his temple softly. “I don’t know. Someone who isn’t you should look into that.” Her arms tightened a little. “I missed you, too.”

Chuckling, he reluctantly let go of her so they could start walking towards the exit. “We’ve all been busy, but I’ve been a special kind of busy.” Wrangling emotionally-stunted billionaires, cleaning up after both vengeful Russians and godlike aliens, trying to debrief other godlike beings and aforementioned man-child, explaining to Dr. Foster that no, she couldn’t have alien teleportation data to play with, a really weird road-trip, and then there had been the chain-smoking Canadian....

He really needed to be less special.

“I ordered Thai,” she said, kissing him lightly as she opened the automatic doors and stole his bag at the same time. “We’re going to eat, possibly kiss for a while, and then you’re going to sleep. In the morning, when you’re any use at all to me, I’m going to act like an exceptionally horny college co-ed. Any questions?”

If she hadn’t been traveling at purposeful speed with a suitcase, he’d have grabbed her and kissed her again for as long as he could get away with. As it was, he settled for squeezing her hand and smiling. “How did I get so lucky?”

“You were vetting you drink. It was charming.” She freed her hand to pop her trunk with the keyless entry, hefted his bag in, then closed it again. “And you’re a pretty good kisser, considering.”

She popped the locks and climbed into the driver’s seat, watching him the whole way.

“Considering?” he said in mock-affront. “Maybe I should do it less often then, if my technique is sub-par.”

“You have it backwards, lover.” She leaned across the seat to kiss him deeply, belting him in while she did it. It was not a gesture that anyone (except possibly Natasha) should have been able to make sexy, but Hadyah managed it. “If your skills are lacking, what you need is more practice. A lot more. Four, five thousand more hours.”

He laughed. “Going for the expert’s ten thousand?” Damn, now he was probably actually going to estimate how many hours he really did have. Privately. Where no one, most especially anyone he was sleeping with, could find it.

“Don’t you know? All of us classical music girls are perfectionists.” She gave him a gently amused smile, started the car, and checked her mirrors before she pulled out. “If it were up to me, you’d spend at least as much time practicing with me as I do with Octavia.”

Considering that Hadyah made a point to put in twelve hours a week at least with her cello, that was a lot of practice. He’d probably need mineral supplements and another twenty minutes on the track every day to survive. “I’ll make a proposal to the Director. I’m sure he’d find that a good use of SHIELD time.” Actually, imagining Fury’s reaction was going to be Phil’s new happy place during really boring meetings.

Hadyah sighed and rolled her eyes. “You know, I think the three of you have forgotten that I’m trying not to know about things like that. Maybe I should get a sign. Or daily text alerts.” She softened the half-rebuke with a smile. “That, or I need to give up and find out if there’s a club for the girlfriends and boyfriends of SHIELD. Are there support meetings I could be attending? ‘It has been one hundred and four days since I last slept with my super-spy....’”

“No,” he laughed. “Do not even. If my boss got wind of that, he would make it mandatory, the better to keep tabs on everyone.” He really would, too. Damn Fury for a paranoid control freak, and damn him extra for being right too much of the time.

“You’re not joking.” Her eyebrow rose. “I love you, but I think you might be in the wrong line of work.”

“I love you, too.” He smiled as he watched her profile. It was so good just to be able to. “And you know I’d get bored out of my mind in a civilian job. In, like, two weeks, tops.”

“I know, I know.” Her faint smile turned crooked. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to make an honest man of you and save you from your depraved condition. But it’s easier not to worry when I don’t know things like that, so be a little more careful.”

“Sorry. Exhaustion and joy are a bad combination for discretion.” And as soon as he said it, he really felt it, like he’d been drugged. The physiological effects were similar enough.

“I forgive you. I’ll get some food in you and put you to bed before you say anything you’d have to kill me for.” Sometimes, he couldn’t tell if she was joking or not when she said things like that. Given the research she’d done on her father after he’d died, maybe she couldn’t either. “But since we’re being indiscreet, there’s a work thing I should talk to you about, too.”

Phil raised an eyebrow. Well, tried to raise it. What actually happened was a somewhat less-sleepy expression and an inquisitive, “Mm?”

“I got ...” she paused, seemed to gauge his expression in the mirror for a moment and decide to discard whatever she’d been about to say. “Too complicated. There’s a job for me in DC if I want it. I can take a year’s sabbatical from the OSO while I do the guest performer gig, and if I decide to stay on and they like me there....” she trailed off.

Phil could maintain a politely-interested expression just about any state of consciousness,  health, or, on one memorable occasion, arousal. His game face was one of his best assets as an agent of SHIELD, after all. Still, he was very, very tired, and so while the information was percolating slowly through his brain, he sat there like a mildly-tranquilized diplomat.

A few seconds passed. Emotions sloshed all over his brain. Kinda. Was it still sloshing at molasses speed?

“That’s.” He reconsidered, brain-to-mouth filter another victim of exhaustion. Started again. “How do you - also no.” Okay, maybe he was even worse off than he thought. “You in DC would be awesome. Really great. I’m pretty sure there’s more supportive stuff I could say but I can’t quite pull the thoughts together. I intend to be supportive. Can this be a place-holder of support until I know what I’m saying?” Jesus. She was right about going to bed early.

“Your support is duly noted and appreciated.” She slipped a hand off the wheel to squeeze his, then put it back. “I think I’m going to say yes. Give it a try, at least.”

Whether ‘it’ was the National Symphony Orchestra or living in the same city with Phil Coulson, she didn’t specify.

“Sweet.” By some stroke of luck or divine intervention, he managed not to say out loud that he would make sure Clint and Natasha kept their distance from her home and place of employment. Well, physical distance. And tap public data only. Okay, yeah, his lovers were kinda creepy.

Hadyah kept driving, quiet now, her eyes on the street and the soft pools of light from the streetlamps. He meant to say something else - he really did - but the hum of the wheels on the asphalt and the quiet rumble of the engine lulled him and he never actually noticed falling asleep.

The world came back to him in Hadyah’s bed, his coat and slacks gone but his shirt still clinging uncomfortably to his shoulders, the only light in the room a soft glow from Hadyah’s lamp where she sat in the small window seat with a book in her lap. That was a sight he could get used to.

“Hey,” he smiled.

“Prince Charming. Shouldn’t you stay asleep until I kiss you?” She half-closed the book and smiled back.

“Must be a bug in the beauty-sleep.” He let his eyes wander over Hadyah, her book, the part of the room he could see without moving even his eyeballs too much. Then an uncomfortable thought clarified enough to be understood. He frowned slightly. “Please tell me I came in here on my own feet and just don’t remember.” Once, he’d walked to a safehouse with two bullets in him. Needing help because he was tired was just pathetic.

“You came in here on your own two feet and just don’t remember,” she replied in the gentle, bemused way that told him only the not-remembering part was actually true. “It’s still dark. Go back to sleep.”

“Mmkay. Looking forward to that kiss.” _Please, God, let me be awake enough for sex in the morning._ Not a very enlightened prayer, but Phil figured he was allowed one or two of those. All work and no play, etc. Also, sex was awesome.

“You’ll get it,” she murmured, and he could hear her shifting to lean against the window. “Sleep.”

This time, even though his dream involved rushing around trying to corral a toddler in an armored flight suit, it wasn’t stressful. Maybe because Hadyah kept smiling conspiratorially at him from street corners, windows, park benches.

Hadyah’s voice was what woke him again, soft and rueful, carrying from the bathroom on one of those tricks of acoustics particular to tile floors. “I just thought you’d want to know he’s all right, rules or not. He didn’t eat last night, but I’ll make him eat breakfast. No, his appetite was fine - he just fell asleep. I didn’t want to wake him.”

 _Rules. Want to know. ‘Was he eating?’ Jeeze._ Phil scrubbed a hand over his face. _At this rate Natasha will have me chipped. I wonder if she’d give the data feed URL to Hadyah in addition to Clint._

“Yeah. He’ll be here a few days, I hope, so you can stop by if you want to. Just call before you show up, Spartacus.” A pause, then a quiet laugh. “No, I’m not going to explain the joke. Goodbye. No, really, I’m hanging up now. Goodbye.”

She came out of the bathroom, shaking her head and still smiling, and caught him looking. Rested a hand on her hip. “You’re awake ahead of schedule again,” she murmured, still smiling. “Maybe I should do something about that.”

The now-habitual goofy grin came back. “Come over here and make me.”

“I have a pot of camomile, Mister Coulson, and I am not afraid to use it.” She shrugged out of her robe and walked to the bed, leaning over to kiss him as she settled down next to him. “Your boyfriend is funny when he’s trying not to sound like he’s worrying, for the record.”

Apparently his arms were fully recovered, because they wrapped around Hadyah with no awkwardness or fumbling whatsoever. Or maybe it was just the incentive.

“Did he do the stoic teenager grunt? That always cracks me up.” How could it feel so good just to hold someone? _This is your brain on love._

She giggled into his shoulder, nuzzling playfully. “I am shocked, _shocked_ , that you would find that attractive. Next you’re going to tell me that you like it when he dresses in hoodies and beat-up jeans while listening to emotive hardcore rock or something equally ‘cool.’”

“Um.” God, was he blushing? And still completely happy. Maybe he did have some questions to ask himself. “Maybe.”

Laughing now, she covered his face with light, breathless kisses. “So teenage boys, stray red-headed Russian sex kittens and wayward middle-aged cellists. Is there anything you like that you haven’t mentioned yet?”

Running his hands up her hips and back, he laughed. “One, not _actual_ teenage boys. Two, there’s the boyhood crush on Captain America--”

“Boyhood?”

“--fine, lifelong, and a fling with the bad-ass Peruvian woman I worked with once. And vibrators. Highly underrated.”

“Vibrators?” Her eyebrows rose. “That is definitely going to require a weekend in at some point. I’ve never particularly been a fan, but I still know a few tricks.”

He glanced at the clock on her bedside. Damn. Still too early for any sex toy shop to be open. “How about tonight?” He nuzzled the place where her jaw met her throat, his own pulse quickening. “We can go shopping this afternoon. I’ll show you what I like, and there’s a new design I’ve been wondering about.” He nudged the hem of her nightgown up, enjoying each new exposed inch of her thighs one at a time.

“You certainly know how to make my day.” She laughed again more softly, then cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. “Which is good, considering that I’ve never contemplated moving for a lover before. You’ll have to be sure to continue impressing me. Vigorously.”

He kissed her languidly, but no less passionately for it, a slow-building heat that eventually had both of them breathing hard. “Mission accepted.” 


	10. Chapter 10

Relatively new to having opinions of her own or not, Natasha Romanoff - or Natalia Alianova Romanova if she was feeling formal and particularly Russian at the same time - knew that she hated international flights. It didn’t matter if they were comfortable or cheap, had no layovers or day-long delays, were civilian or military. They all consisted of the same thing in the end - sitting for hours and waiting for something to happen. On her best days, she managed to lose herself in a mission briefing or one of the cheap novels she bought by the dozen any particular year.

The last forty-eight hours had not been two of her best days. The week before had been almost relaxing, losing herself in the skin of Andrea Simons (charming British businesswoman with a weakness for Arab men, vacationing in Cairo, light-headed after a few glasses of wine) and winning over her marks. But Andrea Simons would never have the nerve or the cruelty to betray two men who adored her for a few extremely classified documents and leave them to the wolves at GID or EHS, and so Natasha had shed her in a Cairo back alley and boarded British Airlines Flight 154 as Caroline Waterstone (brisk American technical expert, anti-social, impatient to get home to her dogs). She’d stayed Caroline through the stopover in London, but the eight hour void of the flight over the Atlantic slowly eroded her ability to maintain the persona. When she realized she hadn’t responded to the stewardess’s polite inquiry about her prefered meal because she hadn’t associated the soft prompt of ‘Carol’ with herself, she knew it was a problem.

So she spent the last hundred and thirty minutes of the flight unhappily stuck as Natasha, staring out the window and running her fingers over her wrist to keep from checking the bag at her feet where the stolen files she was transporting were tucked away. Wishing she’d broken character enough to tuck a romance novel into her carry-on.

The interminable flight finally ended on the tarmac at JFK International, spilling passengers for the three hour layover, and she pulled her second carry-on from the overhead compartment while keeping the first bag - the one she’d kept under her feet during the flight - low at her side. Once the crush of people subsided, she set the first bag down and extended the handle to let it roll behind her. A hundred meters later, the man who’d been following her since the exit ramp slipped in close enough to run a light hand down over her shoulder and upper arm, then tap her elbow twice lightly. She took a step away from him as though the touch were unwelcome, let go of the handle of the bag, then started toward the security station fifteen meters away at a brisk trot. By the time she came close to it, the man and her bag had vanished into the flow of traffic. She stopped, crossed to the bathroom and washed her hands, then came back out.

The river of people moving through the terminal had swept on. No one seemed to pay her any particular attention. The handoff had been successful, the package was now the responsibility of the man whose face she hadn’t seen, and she had nothing in particular left to do except make her flight back to DC and go back to the apartment SHIELD paid for there. Put her ready-bag back in the closet. Make dinner. Go to sleep.

The thought was inexplicably repellant, and she stopped and stared out the terminal window for a few minutes while she polled her instincts for some slip or security failure she might have missed - some reason for her pattern-recognition skills to be telling her _get back on that flight and your life is over_. Hunches like that had saved her life before.

But she came up with nothing except the ghost of her own reflection staring back at her from the window, so she picked the first airport bar she came to and went in. An hour and a quarter of a bottle of export vodka later, staring up at the list of arrivals and departures, she decided that she was definitely not going back to DC. Maybe Monaco. Maybe Sydney. Maybe Tokyo.

She got up, collected her bag, and made for the nearest customer service desk - Delta, it turned out. Leaned against it lightly, took a deep breath and assembled her serious voice. “I would like to buy a ticket.”

The young man behind the desk looked up at her, blinked a couple of times like he was thinking about her without her clothes, then cleared his throat. “Ah, yes, ma’am. For which flight?”

She looked up over his head, letting her eyes run over the flight information, and until words came out of her mouth that she was sure she was choosing at random. “Flight twenty-one eight-seven.”

“Let me just... yes, ma’am, we do have seats available in both Economy and First Class.” He looked back up. “One ticket to Portland, coming right up.”

 _Portland._ The word rattled around in her head, but she ignored it and took the wallet from her right jacket pocket, extracting a card and driver’s license to offer to him. “First Class,” she specified.

“Yes, ma’am.” He busied himself with the keyboard for a moment, then produced a printed boarding pass and ticket. “Departing from B35 in twenty minutes. Will there be any baggage?”

“Just what I have with me.” She took her cards back, then the tickets, and found herself giggling. It refused to stop until she was actually sitting down in front of B35 with her bag between her knees, which drew stares parts of her training found uncomfortable. It was not good to be noticed, even if she had no reason not to be.

She didn’t have to wait long. They started boarding almost as soon as she’d taken her chair, and her seat was near the front. She put her bag in the overhead, tucked herself into the seat, buckled her seatbelt one-handed and closed her eyes. Instinct kept her aware of the flow of people through the cabin, the attendants settling people into their seats, the distant sound of aircraft at the other terminals. The seat next to her stayed empty. The stewardess had the sense not to bother her.

They taxied. The engines vibrated against her skin through the frame of the plane.

Portland.

She opened her eyes, saw the seatbelt light off, signalled the stewardess. The middle-aged blond woman crossed to her, expression gently concerned, and Natasha faked a convincing smile. “Water, vodka and champagne, please. Keep them full.”

The stewardess paused a moment, as if about to ask a question, and Natasha gave her a firmer look. Whatever the woman thought, she kept it to herself and brought what she’d been asked for. Natasha kicked out of her heels, unfastened her seatbeat and curled up in her seat. Put the drink tray on the seat next to her down. Closed her eyes again.

The drinks were there when she opened them. She finished the vodka in a few long swallows, then washed the taste away with the champagne. It wasn’t even proper Russian vodka, but it would do. She picked up the iced water last, held it against her temple and went back to looking at the inside of her eyelids.

That was better. She didn’t quite sleep, but it was something like it.

She caught a cab in front of the Portland airport almost entirely automatically, folding herself into the back seat, and only when he prompted her for a destination did she have to shake the fugue off a little. “Alder and 11th,” she told him flatly, then went back to staring out the window at the lights - the airport, then the city. Finally they stopped, and she paid with a fifty without checking the meter.

Drunk and twenty-nine hours without sleep or not, the door of the building didn’t take her more than a minute to get open. She was actually in the middle of doing the same with the front door of the apartment she wanted when her hands stopped. There was something...

Oh. Yes. She put the lockpicks away and rapped her hand against the door. Leaned her head against it. Waited.

When it started to move, she straightened up a little unsteadily. Hadyah Savchenko stood in the doorway, robe wrapped lightly around her and dark hair loose around her face, and she looked Natasha over for a long moment. Two. Crooked a small smile.

“I forgot to call,” Natasha blurted out. She didn’t know why.

“I think we can forgive that just this once. Come in.” Hadyah slipped an arm around her, eased her through the door and closed it behind them. Natasha leaned into her shoulder. Honeysuckle. Hadyah smelled like honeysuckle.

She made a soft, wordless sound and dropped her bag. Leaned into Hadyah a little more. The taller woman managed her weight easily, guiding her around the kitchen and into the front room. Down onto the couch. She knelt there for moment, letting Natasha cling to her and working Natasha’s shoes off, then gently began extracting herself from Natasha’s arms.

Natasha made a small sound of protest.

“Easy. I’m not going anywhere.” Hadyah brushed strands of Natasha’s hair out of her face. “You need water. Just stay here for me.”

Incrementally, she loosened her grip. Hadyah’s lips feathered her cheek, and then she was alone in the shadows of the living room. She found the end-pillow with her hands, dragged it close and wrapped herself around it. It helped a little. The sense of being on the edge of falling didn’t go away.

“Natasha.” Hadyah’s whisper, close. Had she fallen asleep? Hadyah’s weight against her back. Warm. Comforting. She pressed into it and felt herself breathing. An arm went around her waist - Hadyah’s, slender, gentle. “Drink.”

The water glass was cold in her hand, and she drank it too fast - it made her cough. Hadyah stroked her back, soothed the cough away. She relaxed and half-closed her eyes, tried to frame an apology, gave up. Settled for resting her cheek against Hadyah’s. They sat like that a little while, half-holding each other. Traffic moved outside. Someone coughed two apartments over. Down on the street, a woman laughed like she was mocking a lover.

Hadyah was murmuring softly into her hair, less words than a gentle lattice of bandages around her like a crash web to keep her from moving or falling. Russian, English, soft nonsense sounds. She made a soft noise of her own, wordless, and let go of the pillow to twist herself around Hadyah and pull that slim soft honeysuckle-scented frame over her like a shield. Hadyah gave her the weight she wanted and she took it, breathing shallowly, nuzzling into Hadyah’s hair and nipping at her shoulder and at her pulse. Hadyah’s fingers tightened in her hair, restrained her, and she stilled. Breathed.

“Natalia.” She stiffened, shivered, buried a keen in her throat. Hadyah kept speaking, voice soft and Russian and patient. “<That is your name, yes? Natalia. I will not let go of you. Tell me what is wrong.>”

She was aware of the sudden slackness in her body, the shallow quiet of her breathing, but it no longer frightened her. Nothing frightened her. “<He had pretty brown eyes and I do not want to think of what will happen to him but I accomplished the mission and that should be all that matters but it is not and I am tired. So tired.>”

“<You are here now. Don’t worry.>” Hadyah’s hand tracing her cheek, brushing away the dampness there. “<Such a pretty girl should not worry so.>”

Instincts uncoiled in the back of her head, and she shifted her hips against Hadyah’s. Lifted her head, lips seeking Hadyah’s. Slender fingers found her lips, did not push inside, held her still. She whimpered in confusion.

“<Not now, Natalia. Not now.>” Soft lips against her forehead, and she relaxed again. Not slack. Still. Quiet. Hadyah kissed her temple softly, shifted the arm around her waist. “<There. Peaceful now. We’ll talk in the morning. Sleep, Natalia. Sleep.>”

Her eyes closed obediently. She slept. For once, she did not dream of the Red Room.

Natalia Alianova Romanova woke in star-spangled darkness, warmth against her back and tucked around her waist, the soft melodic murmur of the third movement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Opus thirty-five sliding over her skin. She didn’t know where her slacks or jacket or blouse were, or her weapons. The room smelled of honeysuckle.

Her head ached surprisingly little. She slipped a hand down to trace the fingers on her belly, found them familiar. Hadyah. Something that had been trying to ratchet her spine tight relaxed. Nobody for kilometers knew who she was, or where.

Nobody except the woman breathing softly into her hair, which did not concern her. That lack of concern should have frightened her. It had frightened her the first time, drinking from the bottle in a cafe. It had frightened her months ago in DC. But it did not frighten her now.

Her instincts again. Somewhere, Clint was feeling the sudden urge to swear without knowing why. The thought made her smile.

Biology chose that moment to inform her bluntly that it had been at least twenty-three hours and a great deal of water and alcohol since her last piss, and she worked her way out of bed with the skilled care of long practice. Necessity and a quick shower attended to, she was thinking about finding her clothes and whether to call ahead to the airport when she stepped out of the bathroom and found dark, quiet eyes watching her sleepily from the bed. She stood there, bra and panties still in one hand, and looked for something to say.

Nothing came to mind.

“<Come here. Lay down.>” Natasha hadn’t turned on the lights in the bathroom, so she could see the smile at the edges of Hadyah’s mouth. “<Unless you’re going somewhere.>”

“<Away from here.>” She walked to the edge of the bed anyway, dropped her underthings in the process, and then it seemed silly to stand so she sat on the edge of the bed where the comforter was still pulled back.

“<That is not a destination,>” Hadyah pointed out quietly. “<Where?>”

Three times, Natasha opened her mouth to name somewhere - anywhere - she could be going. Three times, nothing came out. Hadyah’s smile turned amused, and she found herself blushing. Again. She had not blushed so much in the last twenty years of her life as she had in this woman’s presence. It should have been infuriating.

‘Should have’ did not seem to apply to Hadyah Savchenko.

“<Lay down,>” Hadyah prompted her. “<Morning is soon enough for leaving.>”

She hesitated a few more seconds. The sheet was still warm under her fingers. Finally, wordlessly, she pulled her legs up onto the bed and squirmed back under the blankets. Hadyah wrapped the comforter around her, and suddenly she was infinitely aware of her own nudity and the soft silk of Hadyah’s nightgown. The surprise made it different. She couldn’t remember the last time arousal had been a surprise.

Hadyah laughed ruefully down in her throat and pressed a kiss into her hair. Natasha looked up at her, confused, and Hadyah shook her head. “I was just thinking,” she murmured, “that if I’d told myself a couple of years ago that I’d had a girl as gorgeous as you in my bed all night without making an attempt on her virtue, I’d have called myself a liar.”

They lay there like that, half-entangled and watching each other and breathing each other’s air, and when Natasha finally spoke again - barely a whisper - she hardly recognized her own voice. “It hasn’t been all night yet.”

“I suppose it hasn’t.” Slim, string-calloused fingertips brushed against her pulse. Tilted her face up so her lashes no longer hid her eyes. “Is that what you want?”

“<Yes,>” she whispered, and the word trembled in her throat. Hadyah shifted up on one elbow and kissed her, slow and long and gentle, and the trembling stopped. She wound herself around the taller woman, rolled on top of her, deepened the kiss until Hadyah was gasping for breath and tracing delicate red trails across her skin. This time, Hadyah didn’t try to stop her. Quite the opposite. They tightened, shifted, struggled for air together.

The kiss finally broke, and she lowered her head to Hadyah’s throat and began tracing kisses from the pulse down toward her collarbone. Hadyah’s slim, strong fingers pulled through her hair, and she buried the moan that rose in her throat against the dark skin of Hadyah’s shoulder.

“<Please,>” she breathed over the hollow of Hadyah’s throat when she lifted her head again, “<call me Natalia.>”


	11. Chapter 11

“Phil! I’m glad I caught you instead of your voicemail....” Hadyah’s voice paused in mid-thought. “Are you on a treadmill, or am I interrupting something intimate?”

“Treadmill, more or less,” he huffed, slowing his pace and ratcheting the resistance to its lowest. “I don’t even know why I decided to try this thing. The pedals go in like five directions.” Giving the controls a quick wipe-down, he moved aside to let the next SHIELD agent use it. “How are you, Hadyah?”

“Having an interesting day. Couple of days.” She sighed, and he was pretty sure the gentle thump in his ear was her head against the window. “Natasha is out buying me groceries. In a sundress, I might add, which looks unjustly amazing on her.”

Just leaving the cardio room, Phil stopped dead, mind a complete blank, then stumbled a little as the closing door actually did hit him in the ass.

A very young agent in the hallway failed to contain his snickers. Phil couldn’t even spare the brain cycles to glare.

“What - Natasha? Groceries?”

“I know. Believe me, I know.” He could hear the rueful smile in her voice. “Groceries. Sundress. Cute little mini-purse in blue leather. Heels. I think she’s wearing a butterfly necklace today.”

“Butterfly.” He tried smacking himself in the forehead once or twice. It didn’t make the situation make any more sense. Finally, in a show of willpower or possibly just desperation, he got himself moving again. “And, wait, you said days?” Natasha’s last mission report had come in three days ago. “She’s been at your place since she went off-duty?”

“I don’t know when that happened, but she showed up on my doorstep drunk and exhausted the night before last. I got some water in her, put her to bed, and she’s been here ever since.” A fractional pause, and Hadyah’s voice turned protective. Edgy. “Is that a problem?”

The track had a few people jogging or sprinting around it. He’d have relative privacy while walking. Of course, at SHIELD all privacy was relative. He sighed. “Not professionally; she isn’t scheduled for anything until next week. Personally?” Another young agent whooshed by in a chartreuse streak. What was it with the eye-searing neon workout clothes? “For me that depends on how both of you are.”

“I don’t actually know.” He heard her shift and a soft jangle of chimes. Definitely in her window seat, leaning against the window with her eyes closed or watching the people on the sidewalks. “She seems better, but it’s ... sometimes, she looks at me and I’m pretty sure she’s looking at me, and other times I feel like it’s one of the girls from the music classes I used to teach when I was in my twenties, bright young things trying to make me like them so I’d teach them better.” She blew out a breath. “So I don’t really know how she is, except more rested and less drunk and dehydrated, but she at least seems happy. I’m confused and honestly a little bit tired.” A pause, then a wry chuckle. “I’m not in my twenties anymore, and I was never in the kind of shape she is.”

Phil blinked. Stopped. Felt a surge of...something. “I...sort of want to be angry about that, but mostly I want you to tell me everything. In detail.”

“I’m not sure you’re in a position to take care of what that would require you to take care of, Phil.” She started giggling. “Or that you have that kind of time right now.”

Half-smiling, half-blushing, he started walking again, trying to think very carefully about the latest mission briefing he was working on. “There’s still half an hour left for my workout, and my office has a private bathroom.” That was it - slow and steady. Logistics. Timetables. Canada. He was almost to the elevators.

“Definitely not enough time. But I could make a start.” Another quiet giggle. “I really can’t believe you’d do that in your office for me. I’m going to have to write this down.” Then her voice sobered. “Do you think Natasha is all right? I don’t mind ... well, no, honesty. I’m certainly enjoying myself, but I don’t want to be helping her hurt herself.”

 _Come on, come on...finally._ An empty elevator. It was probably not best use of his security clearance to lock out anyone else trying to use it, but, fuck it. As abuses of power went, it was fairly benign.

“Not that this is necessarily reassuring, but you couldn’t stop her hurting herself if that’s what she decided to do. I don’t think she did, though.” The view of the river through the glass of the Triskelion was nice. Calming. “My guess is she’s trying to figure out what to do with her inscrutable and undoubtedly complicated feelings about you.”

“Ah. So she’s ... trying things out? Playing up the younger girlfriend angle to see how it feels? I guess that makes as much sense as anything.” The soft thump of her head touching the glass. “It’s good to hear your voice, you know. I was walking around all day yesterday feeling like I ought to call, but I never got the chance. I miss you.” A low, faint chuckle. “In more ways than one, though it’d probably kill me on the spot if I tried to have you both here at once. Have you noticed how long she can hold her breath?”

And that was when the elevator doors opened. Thank God he still had the towel to hold in front of him. “About four minutes, last I checked.” Luckily, the agents waiting to get in didn’t seem to notice. He managed to get all the way into his office without incident.

“There is one other thing I wanted to mention. Before, you know, my description.” The impish chuckled went strangely with the deep, careful breath that followed it. “She asked me to call her Natalia. That’s her birth name, isn’t it?”

Door locked, he paused in closing the blinds. “As far as she knows.” Took a deep breath, finished the task, went to lean one arm against the wall and look out the window. “She hasn’t asked that of anyone else, to my knowledge. Not me or Clint, anyway.” He smiled softly. “You’re pretty special, Hadyah.”

She didn’t say anything for long enough that it was actually starting to worry him a little, but finally she took a deep breath and audibly let it out. “I know that she’s probably capable of breaking me in half with her little finger and convincing me that the moon really is made of cheese and I’d like to buy some,  but when she’s around me all I want to do is tuck her in next to me and chase some of that emptiness out of her eyes. I really thought I was past the point in my life where I fall for girls because I think they need taking care of.”

That made his chest tighten a little.

“Yeah, she gets me with that too, sometimes. I mean, she doesn’t open up for me, exactly, but she lets me see her need Clint.” Little moments - curled together in bed after sex, or when something had triggered a bad memory, or when she woke shaking from a dream. Even once when she’d been sick. He could see how that kind of vulnerability would be attractive to anyone even a little given to nurturing. He’d have succumbed to it himself if Natasha had really gone limp in his hands. “You know she’s probably never going to get all the way better, right?”

“Do any of us?”

He gave a wry half-laugh. “Not really, no. You really are wonderful.”

“I’m just glad you think so. Now, if you want to be finished before she gets back with the vegetables, you probably ought to get your pants down.” Now she was definitely grinning.

He was, too. “I love it when you get bossy.” Drifting to the bathroom, he followed her suggestion. “Done. Now, start with what you were both wearing.”

“Well, she wasn’t wearing anything at all - which, by the way, I was entirely unprepared for. The kind of muscle definition that girl has... god, I’m glad I’m sitting down just talking about it. And then there’s her hair, which is even better in the dark....”

 


	12. Chapter 12

Normally, Phil hated moving and everything to do with it, but the fact that Hadyah was coming to DC eclipsed all the box-lifting, dust-sneezing, finger-smashing dread he would usually be feeling about now. Which just freed up space for him to worry about the fact that she probably had other people helping her move. Friends. Why had he not met her friends yet? She knew... well, okay, some of his friends. The ones he was sleeping with. Maybe this line of questioning wasn’t actually going to go so well for him.

 _Because you’re never here more than a few days at a time,_ his unhelpfully helpful conscience decided to finish up, _and the two of you spend all your time going out together or staying in together or having a ridiculous amount of sex._

When his conscience put it like that, he actually didn’t feel as bad about it. Apparently he could do selfish.

He pulled the rental car up to the curb behind the PODS unit that would store her furniture and less-frequently used books, clothes and kitchenware. At least, he was pretty sure that was the theory. _Everything I don’t need in a furnished apartment_ had been Hadyah’s summation.

The last time Phil had moved anywhere without someone on the SHIELD payroll relocating his things for him, he’d been about twenty-five years younger. Well, no time like the present. A bottle of Hadyah’s favorite lemonade in hand, he knocked on her door.

A very familiar, very beautiful redhead opened the door in short shorts and a halter top. Today her necklace had a hummingbird.

Phil blinked.

“Hi.”  

“Hi!” Natasha smiled at him cheerfully, relieved him of the lemonade and kissed him on the cheek all at the same time. He couldn’t remember a time he’d heard her native accent so strongly when they weren’t in trouble. “Come in. We’re sorting. Zvezda moya is having trouble choosing which books to store, so Rachel and Mister Lewis are on the porch taking a break. How was your flight?”

“Good?” So Natasha was trying out a whole...perky thing. Very weird. “Safe, boring. You seem...upbeat.”

She laughed and practically bounced into the kitchen, which made her look about seventeen and extremely _happy_. “It’s a nice day, moving is coming along, I’m getting along with people... good reasons to be upbeat, yes?” She flashed a smile over her shoulder as she put the lemonade in the fridge. “She’s in the practice room. I’ll take you. You might get lost.”

Considering that it was a one story, two-bedroom apartment, that was probably a joke. He honestly couldn’t tell right now.

“Sure.” He waited until her back was turned to roll his eyes, but it was Natasha, bizarre persona or not. She probably knew somehow.

There was no chance of getting lost, but there were lots of boxes in each room and the hallway he had to pick his way around, so it took somewhat longer than usual. Hadyah was sitting in the middle of the near-total chaos, sorting books from one of the shelves into piles whose contents she was constantly stopping to revise, and his first thought was that he hadn’t realized she owned a jean skirt or a cotton blouse quite that thin. He didn’t get to his second though, because Natasha picked her way over the books and dropped down into a kneel behind Hadyah,  wrapping her arms around the taller woman and whispering in her ear in Russian. “<Your long lost boyfriend is here, my star. Is there any chance of a final sorting in the future?>”

“<Maybe. Maybe not. Less likely if you keep distracting me, my little bird.>” Hadyah reached back to run a hand through Natasha’s hair while she turned her head, finally getting a look at Phil. Her smile went from warmly amused to delighted in a breath. “I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”

Trying to make his brain recognize that this was not, in fact, a dream (for one thing, he didn’t usually dream in Russian), Phil tried a smile. “Me neither, but I managed to dodge my boss. You look amazing, by the way.”

“I don’t believe you, but I love you for trying to convince me.” Hadyah got up, Natasha tucking herself under one arm in the process, and picked her own way across the books to wrap Phil up in a hug. Natasha, mercifully, didn’t try to join in. Phil’s brain was working enough overtime without blood deprivation coming into it. “Whatever you had to do to make your getaway, I’m glad you did it.”

Her voice was soft, a little raw with feeling, and flooded with relief. The way she was holding on to him - hard, both arms around his neck, her face pressed down against his hair - told him which one of those was about him.

“Everything all right?” he murmured into her hair. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure she’d tell him in front of Natasha, especially if Operation Perky Girlfriend was wigging Hadyah out as much as it was him.

She laughed, some of the roughness still in her throat, and leaned back enough to look into his eyes. Out of her shoes, they were eye-level with each other, and he could see every little flicker of emotion in her face - tired, nervous, grieving, quietly joyful. “I haven’t moved these bookshelves in years. The dust bunnies are terrifying,” she said. “I feel as though I could uncover the mask of a pharaoh any moment.”

He nodded gravely. “It’s very brave of you to take on an established nest. Especially without a flame thrower.”

Staring at him for a moment as if she wasn’t sure he was joking about the flame thrower, she reminded him he was still working on civilian humor. Then she smiled, kissed him and squeezed his shoulders. “Well, now I have you here to look after me. How are you with wiring? My stereo and television need to come down and be packed. Rachel, Lewis and I are all hopeless with it, and Natalia has been sorting my clothes.”

Phil’s eyebrows went up, and Natalia chuckled from somewhere behind Hadyah’s back. “ _Zvezda moya_ wanted to bring them all, so I made her leave to do this. I promised her I would give her three suitcases that would do everything she needed until she decided on new clothes to buy.”

Phil smiled. “Pretty good.” Well, if the Perky Girlfriend decided that wardrobe optimization was more important than using her tech expertise or incredible muscle tone, Phil wasn’t going to argue.

When he saw the tangle of cables behind the cabinet in the living room, his eyes widened a little. _The average bomb is less complicated than this._  “We could just shove them in a bag. Who did you say was helping you unpack?”

“She hasn’t picked anyone.” He didn’t know the voice or the face, but since she came in from the porch, Phil decided the woman sporting sweats, cornrows, a wine glass and a wedding ring must be Rachel. She was probably a few years younger than Hadyah, definitely spent more time in the gym, and was giving Phil a decidedly speculative look. “The good money at the Symphony was that you were going to volunteer but not show up. Rachel Quincey. You must be the famous Phil Coulson.”

Shaking her hand, he smiled at her with a raised eyebrow. “Famous?”

“Well, locally. She hasn’t been able to shut up about you for months.” She had a brisk, firm handshake. “The last man she talked about this much turned out to be a professional art thief, so you can imagine how excited I am to be the first one to get the goods on you.”

“I see. Nice to meet you.” He called over his shoulder to Hadyah. “Art thief?”

“He had _wonderful_ hands, and his girlfriend was gorgeous,” Hadyah half-shouted back. “The police barely even asked me any questions.”

Apparently not, if it hadn’t shown up in her background check.

Rachel sighed wistfully. “She really was. I mean, not as easy on the eyes as Natalia, but still damn pretty. Hadyah always seems to find the best looking girls.”

“You know, there are easier ways to blow your own horn.” Phil couldn’t see the man out on the porch, but if he was as big as his voice was deep, he’d give Steve Rogers a run for his money.

“Clarinet,” Rachel sniffed dismissively.

Laughing, Phil picked up some tape and and a Sharpie and started marking cables to match their ports. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet any of you sooner,” he apologized.

“Hadyah says you travel a lot. Government technical expert.” Rachel snorted gently. “I think she’s just making excuses for keeping you in her bedroom every time you visit.”

“Rachel!” Hadyah’s scolding voice drifted in from the practice room.

“What? Come on, you can’t tell me that’s not where he’s earning his keep. It’s certainly not in candlelight dining and flowers!” Laughing, Rachel shook her head and then put her wine down to help wrap up the cables Phil was removing. “She can be such a square sometimes,” she muttered under her breath.

“I’ll have you know,” he said, grinning, “that there were at least two candle-lit dinners. But I’d also be lying if I said I was sorry about the sex.”

She grinned right back. “There. I was wondering why she liked you. You’re funny. Hadyah goes for funny, but usually it’s women. Harry was her last guy, that was a few years ago, and even she knew he was bad news.”

“Rachel is an inveterate gossip.” Lewis was not - quite - as big as his voice sounded, but he definitely was built. He’d have fit right in at SHIELD, except that he’d lost the tie and jacket that went with his shirt somewhere along the way. “Don’t tell her anything you don’t want everyone in the greater metro area to hear about by nightfall.”

“Psh. Not _everyone_.” Rachel grinned widely. “Just the interesting people.”

Leaving Rachel with the cables, Phil shook Lewis’ hand, too. “Thanks for the completely unnecessary warning. Good to meet you.”

“And you. I actually didn’t know Hadyah liked men until she came by my shop and started talking you up.” He knew how not to crush Phil’s hand in the shake, which wasn’t true of every big man Phil knew, even professionally. “My husband is going to owe me when I get home, and not just for having to skip helping to go in to work. He bet you’d turn out to be some sort of dashing foreign service agent.”

“I can be dashing,” Phil protested. “Hadyah! Tell him I’m dashing.”

Natasha’s sound of skepticism carried all the way from the bedroom, and Hadyah started to laugh loudly enough that it filled the whole apartment.

“Or not.” He shrugged with a good-natured grin. “Do I want to know what your money was on?”

“IRS accountant.” Lewis and Rachel were sporting the same matching grin now. It was a little bit hard on his ego. Then Hadyah came through the door, picked her way down the hall and slid her arms around his waist to kiss him, and he forgot about it.

“You are absolutely dashing,” she whispered into his mouth. “Don’t pay any attention to them.”

“Mmm,” he agreed, pulling her warmth to him. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.” She ran a hand over his shoulder, nuzzling against him as she wrapped her arms around him. He caught Lewis’s eyes widening and Rachel’s jaw dropping a little, and then she kissed him again and he forgot about that part, too. For a minute or two, he didn’t even think about the boxes waiting to smash his fingers.

Rachel finally interrupted them with a dramatic sigh. “Good god. Will one of you please take a breath? I’m starting to worry about brain damage.”

“Yours or theirs?”  Lewis chuckled.

“Either. Both.”

The goofy grin was back, and Phil didn’t care. “I thought I’d be more embarrassed to be in that disgustingly besotted couple, but I’m not.”

“It definitely has its compensations,” Hadyah agreed softly, tracing her lips over his cheek. “I’ll get the box for the stereo. Once you finish up here and Natalia is done in the bedroom, we can think about dinner.”

He nodded in agreement, then went cheerfully back to the cables. Hadyah sent Lewis back to the bedroom to cart out the boxes of books she’d finally finished sorting (or just given up on and chosen randomly, that was also possible), and was in the middle of telling Rachel what she wanted done with the glassware when Rachel’s phone trilled and the younger woman sheepishly dug in her pocket for it. Hadyah raised an eyebrow, folded her arms and waited.

“My husband,” Rachel explained a little sheepishly once she got her phone back in her pocket, offering Phil a shrug. “You have sex with your ex one time before the wedding, and men get so jumpy about it.” Hadyah’s eyebrow went up a little further. Rachel cleared her throat. “Come on. No break longer than fifteen minutes is totally one time, no matter how many positions are involved.”

“Of course he got upset,” Phil commented. “You didn’t invite him.”

“Hadyah’s not his type, anyway. Too white.” Rachel snuck a quick look at Hadyah’s face, then backed up a couple steps. “What? You are. And I’m married, so you can’t spank me anymore.”

“Can I? Please?” Natasha, leaning against a box in the hallway, looked disturbingly cheerful about the chance to help.

Rachel opened her mouth, closed it, looked at Natasha and bit her lip. Hadyah smirked. “No, Natalia. She’s married. Help Lewis with the books, would you?”

“<Yes, darling.>” Sashaying her hips a little, Natasha vanished into the practice room.

“I think I hate you,” Rachel moaned quietly into her hand.

Hadyah just chuckled.

Suppressing a laugh of his own, Phil reinforced the box with more tape. He’d have to pick up some more soon; he hadn’t really thought about the flimsiness of cardboard for a long time.

Or maybe being used to reinforced steel crates and briefcases was affecting his judgement. He’d ask Natasha about it when he saw her at work next. He wasn’t sure he could handle a giggle with his answer.

On the other hand, he couldn’t say he didn’t approve of the shorts.


	13. Chapter 13

“So there’s good news and bad news,” Hadyah Savchenko said into her phone while she played Tetris with the groceries in her new and exceptionally high-finish refrigerator. She could have taken things down to the full-sized freezer and even larger storage refrigerator in the basement, but that would mean that she’d have to go through the (presently completely empty) basement and admit that they existed. She’d rather make things fit in the kitchen instead.

“Is this where the good news is actually good, or one of those times the lame silver linings is disguised as good news?” Phil teased. She was pretty sure it was teasing. Sometimes his deadpan was too good for her to be sure.

All things considered, she decided he deserved an exasperated little sigh. So, after due judicial review, she gave it to him. “The cable modem and the television and Netflix are all speaking to each other. Also, there will be dinner when you get home at seven - which you will - and I may be here to accompany it if you’re suitably impressed. Good enough?”

“That sounds wonderful,” he said wholeheartedly. “Very impressive. Which makes me worry about the bad news, now.” There was that odd silence on his end of the line - she’d never asked if it was the quality of his phone, or some kind of noise-cancelling frequency his agency used, or something else entirely. She didn’t really want to know.

She also didn’t want to go through with telling him the bad, now that they were actually talking and the warm glow in her chest was starting to settle in, but under the circumstances it couldn’t be helped. The moment she’d brought it up, she’d committed - if she tried to back out now, he’d just worry. “Natalia and I finished unpacking this morning before she caught a taxi to wherever it is that you’ve sent her for the next ‘approximately a month,’ and this place looks about a quarter finished. I’ve shut the door on one of the bedrooms because there is absolutely nothing in there but paint on the walls. I swear to you, my practice room is the only place in the whole house that looks like a place fit for human residence and not some sort of under-furnished dollhouse or college dorm room.”

“Mm,” he non-answered. Paused. “I’m sure we can figure out something to do with the space.”

“Clint could put in an archery range in the basement,” she said, not entirely joking and trying not to be annoyed by his casual attitude about it. For Phil Coulson, a livable space consisted of somewhere to put his memorabilia, four walls, a roof and working appliances. It was distinctly not his fault that he’d probably spent most of his adulthood in sterile safe houses maintained by government employees.

“The basement isn’t ninety meters long,” he protested. “Though we could put in a nice home gym or rec room. Maybe a holographic target system....”

“Phil, love,” Hadyah said in what she hoped was a gentle voice while she started prepping ingredients for the beef stronganoff, “I don’t want to live in a house we have to rip up the bottom floor of for a month to install I-don’t-want-to-know-how-much in government property. All right?”

“It was a joke,” he muttered. “Sorry. If you want a smaller place, I can have someone keep an eye on the listings.”

 _And learn an entirely new security system worthy of Fort Knox? Thank you, love, but no._ Hadyah shook her head carefully so as not to dislodge the phone from her shoulder. “It’s all right. We’ll figure out what to do with it. Just come home safe tonight and I’ll be happy. Well, that and give me a working number for Clint so I can ask if he’s planning to stop in again tonight.”

“He tends to ‘accidentally’ lose his phone,” Phil answered with an audible smile. “But I’ll impress upon him the value of calling ahead.” There was a shuffling of paper. “Anyway, I’m easy about the house. If it’s where you live, it’s home.”

“Love you, too. I’ll see you tonight.” Hadyah shifted the phone into one hand, kissed the screen, then killed the line. She was getting pretty good about reading when he needed to get back to work, all things considered. If only everything else were going quite so smoothly. Well, it was early. They had time to work things out, and worrying about it now wasn’t going to do any worthwhile good. Besides, she had dinner to make.

But if Clint showed up without so much as a word again, she promised herself, he was getting whatever was left after she served full plates for herself and Phil. Even if he was still pissed about she and Natalia going through with whatever it was they were doing (she was going with dating for the moment, but she was pretty sure that it was only true in the broadest sense of the term), she wasn’t quite ready to have him walking in and out of the house she was living in without notice. She wasn’t sure she’d _ever_ be ready for that.

On the other hand, he hadn’t actually tried to do anything spectacularly stupid by way of expressing his anger either, so she probably ought to keep trying.

* * *

It was probably a measure of how much her life had changed in the last couple of months that, after Phil unexpectedly agreed to her suggestion that he ought to bring some people over from work for a dinner party, Hadyah’s first thoughts were if the dining room and veranda were going to be large enough and whether any of Phil’s guests had special dietary needs.

When she’d voiced the second question, her lover had provided the answer (Maria Hill: corn allergy; Jasper Sitwell: vegetarian) so quickly that it made her wonder how many personal details he knew about his co-workers. She actively refused to think about the reciprocity of such information and how much, if any, was about her.

She was still trying to adjust to how much space there was in the Seminary Hill house that Phil had arranged for them in Alexandria. Four bedrooms and two baths over two stories, a generous yard tastefully enclosed in fences, twenty minutes from work - it was probably someone’s idea of perfect. Even the relatively paltry scattering of Phil’s worldly goods and what she’d brought with her from Portland had been filled out by an array of furniture and decoration that someone at SHIELD she’d never met had taken care of. Probably at the same time whatever absurd security system they’d built into the house was put it.

In any event, the long oak table in the dining room comfortably seated eight people, which was enough for herself and Phil, four other agents, a plus-one, and an open seat for the Director, should he take them up on the (Phil assured her) largely pro forma invitation. She’d asked him if he’d ever been to a Passover meal, and if the Director was as predictably absent as Elijah. That’d gotten a laugh - one of the bright, startled ones she most enjoyed - but not an actually answer, so she’d made sure to add an extra steak to the shopping list for the Director.

It would have been easier with Natasha to handle the shopping, but she was off somewhere doing something that Hadyah knew better than to ask about. Her _ptichka_ would get back when she got back, just like Clint would, and Hadyah took a certain satisfaction in being able to put the meal together herself - deviled eggs and _okroshka_ and a vegetable platter to begin with, followed with a choice of cobb or romaine salad in a balsamic vinaigrette, and then a steak or _blini_ with a variety of toppings. Her mother’s baklava recipe finished the whole thing with a flourish.

“I love it when you show off,” Phil had murmured into her ear, his arms wrapped around her waist while she was painting another layer of _filo_ with butter. “This looks amazing."

“It will be if you don’t distract me.” She’d flicked her hand against his hip in mock-reproof, but hadn’t been able to keep herself from smiling. “You’re just glad I’m not making you cook.”

“I seem to remember offering to take care of the salad and steak.” Glancing around the kitchen, he’d nabbed an apple from the bowl. “Need me to pick up anything on my way home tonight?”

“Booze.” She’d addressed herself to her baklava, humming softly while she worked at it. “Your all-nighter with Clint over the weekend finished what we had except for a couple of middling bottles of wine. I can’t imagine your friends want a dry party. I also made you lunch, which I won’t do if you forget it again.”

“You’re a saint.” He’d kissed her cheek, added the apple to the sack lunch, and headed for the door. “Love you, Hadyah.”

“I love you,” she’d told him, and that’d been the last they’d spoken for the past nine hours. Which wasn’t unexpected, exactly - they’d been talking on the phone less often since she moved to Washington - but it did mean that she still didn’t have a confirmed guest list when she put her cello down and went to wash up and dress for the night. She did her best not to fret about it, but she wasn’t used to having nerves about her dinner parties. Of course, she wasn’t used to having people who needed armed guards to dinner either.

Those, at least, would be staying outside in more-or-less discreet positions. Phil had told her that their guests would also be armed, and offered to simply invite everyone to a restaurant instead if that made her uncomfortable, but since the man himself was nearly always armed - not to mention Clint and Natalia, who she was always surprised didn’t clank when they walked - it seemed like a moot point. At least they’d be concealed holster - that was one nice thing about intelligence officers.

Somewhere, her father was spinning in his grave again. Someone probably could have been powering a small town off of that in the last year. She turned off the water, wrung her hair out and reached for a towel while she threw a crooked smile at her own reflection. _You picked this, Savchenko. You’ve no one to blame but yourself for how strange it is._

One honest-to-god housedress with classically tailored jacket later, she came down the stairs to meet Phil unloading two grocery bags full of wine and spirits.

“A couple of reds, a couple of whites, nice vodka, Bailey’s to spike the coffee, and brandy because I couldn’t resist,” he grinned up at her. “Be glad I’m against smoking and gender segregation. Also, you look great.”

“From what you’ve told me, I’d get to recline with Ms. Hill and Ms. Hartley while you’d be forced to share brandy with Mister Sitwell. Other than needing to rob the two of you of the brandy, why should I be opposed to gender segregation again?” She crossed the room to the liquor cabinet and kissed him lightly, chuckling in her throat. “And if any of your friends tries to light tobacco in my house, I will end them with a kitchen knife.”

Laughing, he put the whites away to chill and came to embrace her. “Don’t worry, I’ve briefed them. I know you hate having carpet cleaners in the house.”

They kissed. “Hartley should be arriving in about half an hour. I’m going to go shower and put on a slightly different suit.”

“It doesn’t have armor plating of some kind, does it?” She made a face at him, eyes twinkling. “Because I plan to take you out of it at the end of the evening, and that isn’t the sort of surprise I enjoy.”

“Armor’s at the cleaners anyway,” he winked, and squeezed her hand.

 _I never know if he’s joking about that. I hope he is._ “Light the grill for me, will you?” She kissed his cheek and then started for the kitchen, careful of her heels on the linoleum while she checked the baklava and the _blini._ Right on schedule.

In fact, it was all sufficiently on schedule that Hadyah could have set a clock by the ‘about half an hour’ it took her doorbell to ring. Which would have been more satisfying if she had not, at that moment, been up to her elbows (well, wrists) in salad. “Phil,” she called over her shoulder without turning around, “the door!”

“Hang on!” came the shout down the stairs. A moment later, the quick thump-thump-thump of her boyfriend jogging down them.

“Izzy! Great to see you.” Phil’s voice was warm and ebullient as he led his friend into the house. “Come in. This is Hadyah,” he introduced as they entered the kitchen, Phil in sock feet and shirt tails untucked. “Honey, this is Izzy. At the risk of coming down to find the two of you have taken over the world, I’m going to go finish getting dressed.”

“Phil,” Hadyah said pleasantly as she reached for a towel and glared at the same time, “didn’t your mother ever teach you that part of the job of the man of the house at a party is to keep guests _out_ of the kitchen?”

“Sorry,” Phil said, heading back up the stairs. He didn’t sound anything of the sort. Wonderful, impossible man - she was going to find a way to get him for this.

“Good evening....” she surveyed the woman wearing a pristine white blouse and most of a navy suit just carelessly enough to be dashing. That dark hair and those blue eyes - not to mention the facial structure, which was magnificent - would have reduced her to blushing incoherence twenty years ago, but Hadyah put on her best hostess’s smile. “He can’t possibly expect me to call you Izzy, can he?”

The woman’s smile was broad, slightly predatory, and entirely charming. “It’s either that or Hartley. Nobody’s called me Isabelle in ages.” She glanced around the kitchen, rather obviously, and suddenly Hadyah realized she must be doing that for her benefit. Probably having already mapped out the room in the first second she was in it. “Looks like quite the spread. Thanks for letting us spooks barge in.”

“How else am I ever going to get to meet any of you? It’s not as though I can stop by the office with a forgotten lunch.” She was not going to blush. She was not going to blush. She was absolutely not going to stand here in her own kitchen in her apron and her dress and her jacket and her two-inch heels and blush like a schoolgirl. It was simply not going to happen. “So if I call you Isabelle, am I likely to be extracted and harshly interrogated? Just for reference.”

“‘Course not. We go easy on significant others,” the agent winked. “Especially when Phil could get me reassigned.”

“Well, in that case, I plan to abuse my unofficial rank and call you Isabelle at every opportunity,” Hadyah informed her with perhaps a little more pleasure than she’d intended. Well, Phil had left her alone in the kitchen with this woman, so he really had nobody to blame but himself.

Wine. She needed a glass of wine right now or she was going to make an idiot of herself. “I’m about to pour the first round of red. Want a glass now?”

“Please.” Picking one of the stools, Isabelle hung her jacket over it and leaned against the counter. “The house is lovely. How do you find DC?”

Before she could answer or open the wine, the doorbell rang again.

“Got it!” Phil called from above. This time, he walked.

“That’ll be Jasper and Wendy,” Isabelle remarked with a wry smile. “He always arrives eighteen minutes before scheduled.”

“Is he afraid things will start without him?” Hadyah finished pouring and passed a glass over. “DC is huge. So’s the house. Maybe I’ll get used to it. No work talk in front of Wendy, right? Phil said she thinks he’s in orthodontia.”

Isabelle threw back her head and laughed. Even her throat was gorgeous. Unfair.

“His damn parents think so, too.”

Phil appeared. “Got two more. Going to break the ice the old-fashioned way,” he smiled, picking up three empty glasses by their stems. Bottle in his other hand, he nodded at Isabelle. “It’s my manly duty to get the guests sloshed, apparently. Coming, Izzy?”

The other agent shook her head. “Not unless you still need me out of your hair,” she said to Hadyah. “We’d just started talking about the ridiculousness of DC.”

“Please don’t go.” Hadyah affected her most desperate, lovelorn stare (which took less work than it should have). “I don’t think I could live without your company for the next, oh, fifteen minutes.”

Phil smiled. “Izzy, if she likes you better than me you’re going to be seeing a lot of the polar research station.” Then he disappeared with the wine.

“Isabelle,” Hadyah said over the edge of her glass, her eyes dancing with a certain wicked mirth that Phil issuing threats to life and liberty always seemed to encourage, “is there actually a polar research station? And does it have visiting hours?”

The spy grinned. “Sorry. Above your security clearance.”

One of her three timers pinged on her cellphone, and she affected an expression of deep regret. “Well, as much as I was hoping we could pass the time with some debauchery on the counters, I’m afraid you’re going to have to go back out and be nice to Phil while I extract my baklava. Otherwise I might stain my dress, and then you’d be off to the arctic.”

“Can’t have that.” Isabelle stood, wine in hand, but left her jacket where it was. “Shout if you need extra hands.”

The way she walked was also unfair - half stalk, half saunter.

“Phil Coulson,” she muttered under her breath while she extracted and then spooned the sauce over her baklava, “I promise you that if every person you work with turns out to be attractive enough to make me wish I was twenty and single, I will find ways to make you suffer that even you won’t be able to laugh off.” Maybe she’d hold his Captain America trading cards hostage.

The doorbell didn’t stop the murmur of voices, only separated Phil’s as he got the door. A woman’s brisk-yet-friendly alto responded. Then a soprano - the last two guests had arrived. Maria and Sharon, if she remembered correctly.

“Please,” she told the ceiling while she poured one of the other reds into fresh glasses for the two new arrivals and balanced them with her own, “don’t let them be quite so easy on the eyes.”

Apparently her guardian angel was in a nastily whimsical mood, because she got her wish in the most minimalistically literal sense imaginable. They were not _quite_ as painfully attractive as Isabelle Hartley.

She was going to find a way to kill Phil with her eyes.

Apparently she was already starting, because when he caught her glance he blinked rapidly and gave her a look of mingled concern and terror. She smiled, very sweetly, and made her way over to kiss his cheek.

“If I need new panties before the night is over,” she whispered in his ear, “it is going to be entirely your fault. Do you understand me, Mister Coulson?”

Phils eyes widened and he made a strangled noise. Good thing she’d waited until he’d finished his sip of wine. “Perfectly. That could be fun after the party, though.”

“I don’t think we have the right furniture for an orgy,” she whispered, then swept off to greet the dark-haired woman with the dour expression and the mostly empty wine glass who she was willing to bet Phil’s ties on being Maria Hill. “Thank you for coming, Ms. Hill. It’s a pleasure to meet you. May I call you Maria?”

“Of course.” She had a measured, firm handshake. “It’s great to finally meet you. Phil’s been on cloud nine since you moved in.” Something sad and wistful flickered across the other woman’s face, and Hadyah resisted the instinctive urge to lay a reassuring hand on Maria’s arm. Somehow, she didn’t seem the type who’d appreciate that particular kind of spontaneous sympathy. “Whatever you’re making smells amazing.”

“I’m glad you think so, because you’re not getting out of here without eating more than you ought to of it. Not to mention drinking more than you ought to, telling a couple of really amusing stories at Phil’s expense and letting me know when you’ll be coming back.” Hadyah flashed her most charming and relentless smile, along with the wink that belonged to it. The key was to get a yes before her victim - er, guest - knew what was happening.

The unhappiness evaporated from Maria’s face. “Oh, don’t worry, I have plenty of Phil stories, and I’m overdue for my embarrassing overindulgence of the year. Do you know the one about him meeting a liaison in Laos?”

“I didn’t know he’d been there. Or that he spoke Lao, for that matter.”

“He doesn’t.” Maria grinned. “Wound up stuck with a guide who took him on the most roundabout route possible. Took three days to go twenty miles.”

“He didn’t notice, or was just too polite to say anything?” Hadyah matched that grin and took a solid swallow of her wine. This was going to be fun.

“I was in the middle of the jungle. I really didn’t feel like ditching the guy and waiting for pick-up in a tree or something,” Phil protested. “Don’t make me tell the one about the hairdresser in Santiago.”

Hadyah adopted her most patient, interested expression - the one that usually reduced Phil to chuckles in spite of himself. “I can already tell that you two are going to entertain me all night. Please, do continue.”

Her lover laughed. “Well, maybe after dinner. We can decide on rules of engagement while we eat.”

Then they were joined by the briskly attractive - if not particular to Hadyah’s taste - man whose taste in suits was obviously almost as monotonous as Phil’s and could only be Jasper Sitwell (and who, to this point, had been occupying himself with delivering what looked more like a lecture than a conversation to a young woman - Sharon - whose gold brown hair was entirely too carefree for the way her eyes were not-so-subtly casing the room), and he didn’t even have a chance to open his mouth before Maria and Phil both snapped “No” in that flat, no-nonsense way that was more emphatic than shouting.

“What?” Sitwell said, without visible surprise. “I don’t get to join in?”

The youngest agent in the room raised a sardonic eyebrow as she trailed over after him, leaving Wendy - who was a nice enough young thing, Hadyah thought, but seriously outclassed by being left alone in conversation with Isabelle - to fend for herself.. “Not since the last Christmas party. You were banned from any and all verbal sparring, remember?”

“That was a joke, wasn’t it?” Sitwell looked back and forth between Maria and Phil, whose expressions suggested it wasn’t, then turned a surprisingly affecting smile of appeal on Hadyah. “Surely the hostess will let me out of that for the night?”

“I never argue with Phil when he’s right,” she said, and hooked an arm around Maria’s waist in a casual slouch that she was hoping suggested she’d been bought off some other way by the taller woman. She really, really wanted to see Sitwell lose that imperturbable expression, and watching Phil try to keep a straight face was just as fun.

“And that’s your freebie,” Maria said, voice edged slightly, as she carefully removed Hadyah’s arm. “I’m not really a touchy-feely sort of person.”

“She’s really a sweetheart,” Sharon piped up. “Nobody else has a sliding scale of whoop-ass when it comes to personal space.”

Hadyah wiggled her fingers and smiled contritely. “I like my limbs where they are. I’ll behave. But I think I almost had him for a minute. Did I, Mister Sitwell?”

“Define ‘almost’,” he said, face completely deadpan.

The doorbell rang again. Hadyah frowned. Everyone who’d RSVPed was in the living room.

She tried to catch Phil’s eye, but he was sharing a look with Maria that could have meant anything. Shrugging gently, she flashed him a smile that said _we’re surrounded by armed guards, what’s the worst that could happen?_ and then walked straight to the front door and opened it before the collection of secret agents trying to talk with their eyes around her decided to blow something up.

The man at her front door was tall, world-worn, very black and sporting an eyepatch. On the whole, she decided, he was either another spy or a pirate. “You wouldn’t happen to be Mister Fury, would you?” she said, smiling brightly, “because if not, I’m afraid I’m going to need more chairs.”

“I am,” he answered, giving her a look that suggested he was observing and cataloging every knowable detail about her. After what could have been a few seconds or a few minutes, he extended his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Savchenko.”

“And you.” She shook his hand and smiled up at him, then stepped out of the way. “We have wine right now and food will be served in a minute, but I imagine right now you’re going to want to treasure the looks on the faces of the rest of my guests. Which, I might add, I’m also going to enjoy profoundly.”

And having said that, she turned her back on what - at least to hear Phil tell it - was probably the secret spymaster of about two thirds of the world to go bring in her devilled eggs. She would have sworn she heard him chuckle.


	14. Chapter 14

The drive back from Dulles (on top of, admittedly, a month long European tour and a flight from Oman that spent two hours on the tarmac) left Hadyah with a blinding headache and the kind of muscle pain that ran all the way from the small of her back up into her temples and jaw; once she’d closed the garage door behind her, she just sat with her forehead resting against the cold of the steering wheel for a while until nature reminded her that she could not, in fact, just stay exactly where she was indefinitely.

It was probably just stubbornness that made her bring her bags in from the car along with her cello, but she did it anyway. The sudden brightness of the lights in the kitchen hurt her eyes and her head both, so she fished the small LED flashlight attached to her key out and used that to arrange her bags in a corner of the living room.

By the time she’d relieved herself, the only thing she wanted to do was crawl into bed and find Phil or Natalia or both there. They weren’t, but the bed was more than acceptable anyway.

She woke up well after daylight the next day, absolutely starving, and a quick survey of the kitchen was all it took to inform her that unless she wanted to eat out of her cans and staple stocks, she was going to have to order delivery or leave the house. Delivery won out - pizza to be specific - and she was in the middle of giving her order when she realized that there was not, in fact, any reason not to put jalapenos and roasted garlic on her order.

The magnets hadn’t been her idea originally - a boyfriend in her late twenties deserved the credit for that - but it hadn’t even taken two weeks for the instability of Phil and Natalia’s schedules to start to work on her nerves and she’d had no intention of waiting until it provoked her into losing her temper. The system was simple enough - three magnetic strips with names written on them, five magnetic beads for each. Blue on the strip meant home for the day, green meant coming home at a reasonable hour, yellow a late night or overnight trip, red a longer absence; a bright violet set of magnets she’d found at the craft store was the marker for an indefinite trip.

There were two violets and a red on the door of the refrigerator at the moment, and she replaced the red next to her name with one of the blues while she adjusted her order.

She lounged in the front room, ate pizza, binged on the kind of soapy nonsense television that she never even tried watching when anyone else was around. Took a long walk and a longer bath, tidied, made herself a real dinner from scratch, played music on the house sound system (Herbie Hancock’s _Headhunters_ , a perennial favorite). None of it helped turn “spacious” into anything but empty.

Even without anyone else in it, her apartment in Portland had never felt empty.

 _I went to Oman and all I got were these stupid blues,_ she texted Rachel at eight - a miserly five on the West Coast.

 _I lost my tent, my camel, my goats, my wives and my oil rig,_ Rachel flashed back less than a minute later, and Hadyah grinned.

 _Figure out how to twang convincingly in Arabic. Not real country-western without it,_ she typed out. _Great concert hall, though. The only goats were in the audience, and they all had suits._

_Sounds classy. Can’t you help with the Arabic?_

_Strictly Quran school. I can just about have a reasonable conversation. I did a rap in Pashto in high school, though. Thought it would catch on._

Rachel fired off an image of a cat looking improbably surprised. _Your mother didn’t box your ears?_

 _Laughed. Made me record it. Still plays it sometimes. I ought to call her._ A little stab of filial guilt worked its way up along her ribs. _Or introduce her to Phil. Natalia. Both?_

_Why haven’t you?_

She sat and stared at the text for a few minutes, chewing it over, then startled herself into a laugh. _Out of the habit. No good reason. Remind me not to forget._

_Forget what?_

Hadyah rolled her eyes. _Take that joke out back, shoot it and bury it._

 _I’m calling PETJ on you,_ a tiny yellow smiley face shaking its fist declared.

_When I tell them how you made it suffer, they’ll give me a medal._

_Point._

_Tell me all the latest gossip, R. I miss everyone._

_Well, since you’re asking...._

It was eleven before she finally went to bed, but she went smiling. That was enough to put the day into the win column.

* * *

Clint was about a block away before he remembered how much Phil’s girlfriend hated it when he didn’t call first. And how un-sexily pissed Phil was when Hadyah was unhappy.

“Goddamit.”

His latest phone was actually still in his possession. He just hadn’t turned it on in, oh, about a week. Two weeks? Hopefully the battery still had some juice. Otherwise, he was going to have to just eat the lecture from Natasha, because there wasn’t really such a thing as a payphone in DC anymore and hell if he was going to track down an outlet.

Did he even still have the charger?

It took five minutes of digging through his duffel to find the battered flip phone - SHIELD had gotten smart and stopped wasting money on smartphones that were only going to get lost, destroyed or given away to poor kids. Not that Phil thought the last one was a waste, but it definitely wasn’t good for his blood pressure to worry that previously secured data might hit Twitter at any moment because Hawkeye had forgotten to remove the SD card.

So. No more smart phones for Clint.

“Do I get power or do I get senior agents busting my ass?” he muttered to the device as he jammed one callused finger on the power button. “You’re replaceable, you know.”

The phone lit up. The battery icon was red, empty, and blinking passive-aggressively.

“Hey,” he said about ten seconds later. That was another thing to be said for dumb phones. Short boot time. “Thought I’d drop by tonight.”

“Thank you for calling, Clint,” Hadyah’s voice said in what he knew - he really did know -  wasn’t meant to be a patronizing positive reinforcement tone. “Do you know when you might get in?”

“Long as it takes to park,” he answered cheerfully. “Phone’s gonna die.”

Which, minimum duty done, it promptly did. Maybe Phil had the right charger in the house somewhere. He got the car parked - legally, even - then hiked up the long walkway to the stately front porch complete with neoclassical columns. The whole place made him feel like a dirty carnie kid again, but the front was the worst. At least inside there was some of Phil and Hadyah’s stuff to make it more homey and make him feel less out of place, though whoever’d filled out the rest of the space for them - Phil had been really proud of ‘taking care of that for Hadyah’ - had the same taste as whoever’d done all the safehouses in Hamburg. Nothing good ever happened to him in Hamburg.

Ringing the doorbell to see his boyfriend was really weird. Hell, ringing the doorbell anywhere was something Clint wasn’t used to.

Hadyah opened the door instead of Phil, and Clint did his best not to show his disappointment. The happier Hadyah was, the happier Phil was, and Clint wasn’t dumb enough not to notice that it hurt her feelings when he wasn’t at least as happy to see her as she was to see him (which was to say resigned with a side of companionable). She was wearing one of the blouse-and-slacks combinations that meant she’d been rehearsing - something he’d learned the hard way by three painfully long afternoons spent listening to the edges of squeaks and scrapes leaking through the soundproofing and the TV noise while he waited for Natasha or Phil to get back from whatever unquestionably more fun thing they were doing at the time - and her rest expression was definitely unhappy. What she did when she saw him was smile, though, and not the tight one that meant she was upset with _him_ , so on the whole the phone could live another day.

“Come on in,” she said with one of the little waves of her hand that said she was getting ready to break bad news. At least she didn’t make him wait long for it - he barely had his coat off and into the hall closet (‘like a civilized human being’) when she laid it on him. “Phil’s late at the office. But dinner’s hot, so you can go ahead and eat if you like. It’s omelettes and french toast for the most part.”

Shrugging off Phil’s lateness - hardly a rare occurrence for a Level Seven - Clint tried a small smile. “That sounds good, actually. Beer?” He hefted the six-pack he’d brought, hoping Hadyah liked terrible beer the way she liked terrible vodka.

“Coffee,” she said by way of refusal, but smiled back anyway and started for the kitchen. She didn’t push him off toward the dining room the way she did with Phil, because they’d done that exactly once - the first time this had happened - and been about midway through the main course when she finally asked if he was as miserable as he looked. Apparently she felt about the same way he did, so they’d taken to eating at the bar in the kitchen when Phil wasn’t around. Not that they tried to have that happen - in fact, Clint would have bet solid money that Hadyah tried to avoid it as much as he did - but probability (and Clint’s lack of advance planning, admittedly) were not on their side.

Hadyah poured him a mug of coffee almost as big as hers, slid him the bottle opener for his beer and then started serving food onto plates. He stayed out of the way. Neither of them felt the need for small talk, so they started on dinner in one of those silences that should have been awkward and wasn’t. He wished Phil was there, she wished Phil was there, but as long as they were going to be waiting on him at the same time....

Well, and he couldn’t quite believe he was saying this even to himself, there was no reason not to be comfortable about it.

“Do you think you have an old Nokia charger?”

“Guest bedroom, bottom dresser drawer. If it’s a wire and I don’t know what it is, that’s where it goes. There’s probably some kind of super-secret spy bugging system in there, for all I know.” Hadyah smiled crookedly, but let him off without a comment on his phone. Natasha never would have. “You’re probably the last person I ought to ask, but what do you do when someone at work ... when you’re the odd person out and you feel like you’re missing steps, and you can’t figure out how to catch up to the dance? Other than, I don’t know, shoot them with an arrow.”

Both eyebrows raised, Clint stared. “Damn. You must be desperate if you’re asking me for advice.”

“Humor me.” Hadyah smiled, but her eyes said _Yes, I am_ in a way that she wasn’t trained to hide.

“Ignore the rules. Do the best you can with what you have. Other people can worry about how you fit or don’t. That’s what happened when I brought Natasha in.” He shrugged and tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed anything. “Sorry, that’s probably not helpful.”

“‘Do your own music. Playing it the way you hear it will always be better than trying to fake hearing it the way someone else does, and the best things happen when everyone brings their own music and then the boss finds the overtones.’” Hadyah laughed softly at his expression, because he honestly had never seen someone go from that kind of cornered tension to relaxed amusement and mean it before. “One of my teachers told me that when I was twenty. I had the biggest crush on her at the time, so I took it to heart. Maybe playing the cello and being a superspy aren’t as different as I thought.”

Clint took a swig of beer and chewed on the last of his toast.

“Maybe not.”


	15. Chapter 15

When she’d tried to pack the box three times and couldn’t see the titles of the books through her tears, Hadyah retreated to the kitchen to regroup. Tea. She needed tea - strong and dark and not at all sweet, not today. It took twenty minutes, standing in the gorgeous kitchen with its granite countertops and barely worn floor, before the tea was cool enough to be only uncomfortable going down. She was willing to accept the discomfort, even welcome it; not just because she needed the stimulant, but because it was a distraction from the way her chest ached.

She filed that stubbornly under ‘aftereffects of crying all night,’ and then carried her tea back into the practice room and started filling the box again.

A little headway this time. Maybe a third full now. At least she could function well enough to stack them in a spatially-efficient manner. Of course, as soon as she noticed, the next book she pulled from the shelf caught her hands in her lap and she sat there staring at the damn thing for who knows how long. She cursed it in Russian, vividly - because obviously it was the book’s fault - and made sure that it fit. There were a couple of new scratches in the cover when she was done, but she could live with that.

There were probably a couple of new scratches on her to match, but she’d live with that, too.

The third box was about halfway full when the quality of the air changed. It was subtle and she was so focused she almost didn’t notice, but she’d gotten a lot of practice in the last few months in knowing how it felt to have someone watching her. She didn’t look up until she’d finished the next book - she was proud of that. It was a good way to keep from crying and she was going to need that badly in another moment.

Once she had the book seated where she wanted it, she dragged in a breath and looked up.

Her gentleman was leaning against the doorframe to the practice room, an expression of quiet dismay on his face and a small bouquet of roses in different colors held against his chest.

“Hi.”

She laughed. It beat crying at the moment, and he just looked so distressed and gallant standing there that she had to do something with the surge of emotion inside her so it wouldn’t crack her chest. “The flowers are pretty,” she managed to get out through the lingering bursts of giggling that sounded a little hysterical even to her. “I ought to put them in water.” Abandoning the box for the moment, she stood up and shook the new folds out of her skirt. It might need an iron later.

“I take it from your expression that this isn’t a sudden attack of minimalism.” Phil - her patient, wonderful, dogged Phil - ignored the side issue of the flowers. She loved that about him. Right now it made her want to throw a book at his head, but she did love it.

“No. I’m going to the kitchen to put the flowers in water now,” she told him in a voice that startled her with its firmness, “and also probably set the coffee-maker running for you. Which means I need the couple of square feet you’re standing in.”

He smiled wryly as he stepped back and handed her the flowers. “They made me think of you.” Trailing her into the kitchen in a way he must have picked up from Clint, he shrugged. “Okay, totally random stuff makes me think of you, too. But the roses seemed like the best gift.”

“They’re lovely,” she told him quietly, and meant it. Taking her one vase that wasn’t in storage in Portland down and filling it with water occupied another minute or so before she had to turn around and look at him again, and she watched the water through the glass to make sure she took the whole minute. She’d done that when she’d first started the cello - put a glass of water on the table and watched the bubbles to keep her eyes focused while her hands worked through the exercises she’d already memorized. It was nice to know that it still worked.

The water jeweled the stems of the roses with delicate bubbles while she settled them in the middle of the small bar in the kitchen. It made her wish for a camera and about five more years of photography classes.

“Hadyah,” he said quietly, “is this a moving out but still together thing or is this a breakup thing? ‘Cause I’d like to know what kind of freak-out I should be having.”

A knot in her chest loosened sharply enough that she had to press both hands against the counter to keep from breaking down into tears. It had always been that way for her - the aftermath of an emotion that was too strong was when the tears came pouring loose from behind the rigid quiet that defined her while it lasted. More than one lover had hated her for that, at the end of things.

Just those words almost froze her again, but she managed to find a tone for her voice that was natural without being incomprehensibly tearful in spite of them. “The first. I hope that it’s the first. I wasn’t sure how you’d....” she trailed off, not looking at him because it hurt too much, and waved to the stately, enormous house instead. To everything it had involved these last months.

To everything she was walking away from.

He stepped closer to her, now within arm’s reach. “You thought I’d break up with you because you want to - because you’re moving back?” She watched his hand on the counter, blunt fingers tapping restlessly before pressing down hard, then pulling up again. “No. I want to be with you. Breaking up is pretty counterproductive to that.”

“People do a lot of counterproductive things when they’re in love,” she whispered, still keeping her eyes on the vase, but she slipped her hand over the counter and stroked her fingers lightly under his and across the callouses on his palm. She knew every one of them by now. “Especially when their lover wants to change things without notice.”

Turning his palm up to hers, he closed the warmth of his hand around hers. “Well. Keeping my head on straight during crises is kind of a specialty of mine.” She could hear the half-smile in his voice. “What isn’t working for you? Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”

“I don’t think so.” She took another deep breath and squeezed down on his hand. It felt good - like an anchor, and not the kind that made her feel trapped. “I just... can’t. All of this. I miss Portland and I miss my symphony. I don’t like Washington and I don’t have the right chemistry with my section and it’s so frustrating that I want to scream, and then I come home and you’re here all the time except when you’re not. Do you know we spent a whole day last week sitting around watching those ridiculous cartoons that Clint likes? The whole day. I actually forgot to practice, and when I realized what I’d used the day for, I felt so frustrated I almost yelled at Natalia.”

The gentle fingers of his other hand brushed a strand of hair from her face, and she leaned into his touch, even if she still didn’t look up. “We could back off, but, yeah, that wouldn’t change the whole not-Portland thing.”

“You couldn’t.” She turned before he could speak and pressed her fingers against his mouth, stopping him, keeping her eyes fixed on the curve of his shoulder through his suit to keep from looking into his face. If she did that, she didn’t know what would come next. Only that it would be a mistake. “I don’t want you second-guessing every time we make a date together. I don’t want the three of you doing mission planning around my comfort level, and don’t for a second tell me you wouldn’t. I want the intensity of your visits back and the quiet between them, not this constant low level vibration that can crescendo or vanish any time.”

Phil took a deep breath, nodded. “More dating, less arguing over the remote.”

“We don’t argue over the remote,” she corrected automatically, then touched her fingers to her lips and smiled crookedly. Leaning down enough to rest her head against his jaw was risky to her composure in more ways than one - hysterical laughter was about as likely as hysterical tears, all things considered - but she needed the physical warmth of him terribly. “Yes, that was what I meant. I’m sorry.”

In response, both his arms slipped around her. “I should say that you shouldn’t be sorry for taking care of your needs,” he started. His voice hummed through his chest and into hers, almost more comforting than the embrace. “And you shouldn’t. But my whinypants ego thinks you should be very apologetic about leaving.”

She kissed his jaw very lightly and smothered a laugh against the curve of the bone under his skin. “My superego feels that I’ve performed some sort of bait and switch, so it can go take your ego off into a corner and baby it for a while until they both feel better.”

His chuckle vibrated her, just a little, and it brought a smile to her face at the same moment it put tears in her eyes. “Sounds good to me. Does your superego like Chinese food?”

“Yes. It thinks that the collective good is served by the promotion of Chinese cuisine. Also, it owes my id a favor.” She leaned up and finally - ever so briefly - kissed him. “I love you, darling.”

Eyes still half-lidded from the kiss, he replied softly, “Love you, too, Hadyah.” Then he clapped her shoulders and grinned. “Takeout or sit-down?”

“Sit-down is more environmentally friendly.” She couldn’t resist teasing him - it was such an overwhelming relief to discover that it still worked, that he was still here and with her, that he didn’t suddenly hate her because her needs weren’t fully meshed with his. It made her feel like a particularly silly teenager to have even worried about that, but long experience assured her that it was impossible to look both dignified and wise while in love (and generally pretty hard to maintain either). “The Pagoda?”

“Excellent choice.”

He helped her into her coat - a ritual of theirs they’d never stopped - and he opened Lola’s passenger door with a flourish and self-aware smile. She ran her hand over the car’s seats, then smiled quietly as she belted in. “Her, I’m going to miss.”

“I like to think she’ll miss you too.” The engine rumbled awake. “Do you want to tell Natasha yourself?”

“I wrote her a letter yesterday. It’s in my underwear drawer. If she hasn’t found it in another two days, I’ll talk to her.” She half-closed her eyes, smiling at the surprise on his face. “You thought I didn’t know?”

“Not exactly.” He pulled onto the street, somehow driving with impeccable safety and caution while still conveying how much he’d rather be tearing down a highway somewhere. “Surprised that you adapted to it so quickly, I guess.”

“Normally I ignore it. It’s easier on me that way. But Natasha wouldn’t know how to handle this sort of news while she’s my _ptichka_ , and I wanted her to have time to process. It seemed like I owed her a chance to deal with it on her own terms.” Wistful sadness spilled into her voice and pulsed in her chest. Somewhere along the way, she’d started to dread losing Natalia almost as much as losing Phil, and easing one of those fears had only sharpened the other.

She couldn’t help that now, so she pushed it down out of sight.

“It’s a good idea,” he murmured. “Wish I could tell you how things might go with her, but I honestly have no idea.”

“I’d tell you that you were being a presumptuous ass if you did,” she said, and ran a hand over his arm lightly to soften the words. “We’ll figure it out or we won’t.” Another pause, another moment in which tears threatened to wash her away, and then she crooked a tiny smile. “I was thinking I’d hire movers this time. Anything else just seemed cruel.”

Phil snorted. “Seemed?”

“Understatement. It’s a skill. You should practice it, love,” she said, laughter cleansing the tears from her throat. “Maybe then you can restrict using ‘golly’ and ‘gee whiz’ to once a month.”

“I have never said ‘golly.’ And I think ‘gee whiz’ only that one time.” A smile was trying to break through his offended facade. “And you should see my field reports. Understatement. Ha.”


	16. Chapter 16

The first thing that Hadyah did when she woke up on the morning of the third day after New York was shower and shave her legs. The Victims Relief Fund concert was in less than a week, which meant dress rehearsals in stockings and formal wear; stockings and hair on her legs were distracting, and so were the inevitable scrapes and itches that followed a shave when she was out of the habit. Which meant that she needed to start today if she was going to be comfortable on the day of the performance.

It also meant she needed to spend the day doing anything but practicing, because her fingers were raw and aching from the hours she’d spent on the music yesterday. She could have called Rachel or Lewis, but she wasn’t ready to leave the house or to have another conversation about the cosmic implications of alien life and its on-camera invasion of Manhattan.

Fortunately, she had books in boxes that still needed unpacking and shelves that needed organizing. Not to mention lunch. Or dinner.

She was working the dough for _naan_ when the knock at the door broke the silence in her head. The _naan_ was finished and she was wiping her hands before she answered it, but the knock wasn’t repeated.

For reasons she couldn’t explain, that made it harder to turn the knob and pull.

Natalia was wearing the distracting smile that for her was an absence of expression. “We’re sorry we didn’t call,” her _ptichka_ explained, “but SHIELD thinks we’re still in DC and we don’t trust the voice recognition software.”

Hadyah didn’t really hear her. The only solid things in the world at that moment were the cold stone of Clint’s face and the shadowed hollows of his eyes.

“I think you’d better come in,” someone who could not have been feeling the sudden crushing emptiness in her chest said calmly.

Her knees buckled before she could step out of their way. The wrong arms caught her.

 

* * *

 

 _Extended debriefing._ That was what Natalia had called it, flat cold paperwork words without meaning, while Clint held himself like someone who’d rather be shot than walk out the door. Like he wasn’t sure he was coming back.

Hadyah made Natalia promise her that he would before she’d let them go, no matter how it hurt her rusted and cracked voice to press them.

Press Natalia, who at least pretended better than she or Clint seemed to be able to.

Everything she was fought getting out of bed, fought eating, fought making coffee or tea, fought walking out into the sunshine to get air into lungs that didn’t want to breathe and pick up makeup to hide the bruises under her eyes. Fought laying her hands on her instrument.

She played until her fingers bled and kept on playing until she knew the whole program for the VRF concert by heart, and she put everything she had into the music - rehearsal and performance both.

Everything but the heart she couldn’t bring herself to touch yet.

 

* * *

 

Rachel asked first. Bright, laughing, impatient Rachel whose hands Hadyah still remembered cuffing down and torturing with her mouth, who hid two college boyfriends in Hadyah’s room before she declared she was done with men, who never met a secret she didn’t want to pry loose with a crowbar. It had to be, was always going to be, Rachel.

It probably wouldn’t have been over sandwiches and scores in the Grand Lobby of the concert hall if she’d made herself a little more available.

“Did you and Clark Gable break up? You haven’t said anything about him in a while, and I’m starting to....” Her face must have given something away, because Rachel’s arm was around her waist as if to stop her fainting. “Hadyah? What happened?”

“He was in New York,” she lied, because it was the truth. “I haven’t seen a body.”

She didn’t want to stay with Rachel and her husband for two days, and said so, but Rachel had been stubborn from the first day. Part of the reason they’d broken up twice.

Hadyah didn’t have the reserves to argue more than a few minutes. But she did keep it to two days.

 

* * *

 

There was frost on her windows the next time Natalia showed up on Hadyah’s doorstep. “I tried leaving him alone for a couple of weeks,” she explained. “His dog was beside itself with worry.”

Hadyah kissed her and wrapped her arms around her _ptichka,_ but not too long, no matter how much she needed the warmth. Hot wiring the car to get away wasn’t out of the question for him. “Bring him up,” she whispered into Natalia’s ear. “The bedding’s on the couch. I’ll make coffee.”

“ _Spasibo._ ” Natalia’s voice was politely grateful. Her fingertips at the back of Hadyah’s neck were what clung like the world might slip away if she did.

Hadyah kissed her again instead of answering, and moved out of her arms for her. It was hard enough being Natalia without people making things more difficult.

 

* * *

 

“Where’s my chocolate milk?” Clint’s irritated question came only slightly muffled by the refrigerator. “I know I bought a quart, like, two days ago.”

“Five. You bought it five days ago and the carton went out with the recycling yesterday.” Hadyah frowned at her coffee - which had too much damn salt mixed into it - and reached for the creamer. “There’s whole milk and chocolate syrup. You’ll figure something out.”

The bottles in the fridge rattled when he closed the door too hard. “Sure. Thanks, Mom. I’m sure I’ll build some character while I’m at it.” Milk and syrup were conspicuously absent. Clint ostentatiously opened a beer well before noon instead.

“If I’d been your mother, you’d have learned to wash dishes and pick up the occasional piece of clothing. Not to mention personally keeping the local liquor store in the black.” Hadyah wanted to regret the asperity of her own voice, she really did, but she couldn’t manage it. She settled for mixing her coffee a little more vigorously than was necessary. It couldn’t do it any more harm than his abuse of the coffeemaker already had.

“That’s a chicken-and-egg question right there. Did the ringmaster drink because I was a little shit, or was I a shit because they drank?” About half the bottle went down his throat. “Not that you could handle anywhere I grew up, plastered or not.”

Hot, shamed rage burned up into Hadyah’s face, and she damn near threw the mug of coffee at his head. Would have, if she hadn’t seen the concentric red and white rings out of the corner of her eye. She froze, half-standing, hand still braced against the edge of the cup, and stared at it until the logo blurred past recognition.

She turned her back on him so he wouldn’t see her tears.

“I’m sorry,” she finally managed to get out around the tangle in her throat.

There was the clink of a bottle being carefully placed on the counter, and then he cleared his throat and came to stand next to her. Not looking at her, or demanding that she look. Just leaning heavily on both hands, incongruous in her kitchen like he always was.

As incongruous as she was, trying to chase the wetness from her face with her hands.

“It’s a first-run 1973 original,” she whispered rustily. “Tiny error in the proportion of the shield. He’d never forgive me if I threw it at your head, even when you’re being a shit. Especially if I damaged you both.”

Clint barked a laugh, rough from disuse and maybe the edge of tears. She was getting more familiar with Clint’s cycle of emotional repression and explosion, but he still surprised her almost as often as she was surprising herself lately. “Nah, he’d forgive you anything. But he’d be pretty pissed.”

“Yeah.”   _He always kept chocolate milk in his fridge._ She didn’t look at him, but she did tilt her head back and close her eyes to try to stop the tears. He didn’t say anything else - not out loud, anyway. Finally, faintly, she smiled. “I forgot tarragon, anyway. I’ll pick some things on my way back from rehearsal. Two percent or whole?”

“Whole.”

When she came home, he’d picked up his clothes and done a frat boy vacuum. She just smiled and put the gallon of chocolate milk away in the fridge.

She’d take her peace offerings how she could get them.

 

* * *

 

Natalia didn’t cry.

Not as anything but performance, at least. Natasha Romanoff could turn on hysterical waterworks when it suited her, but when she was engaging in any degree of what passed her for emotional honesty, there were no tears. It was about as reliable a rule of the universe as the sky usually refracting blue and the sun coming up in the morning, and it had never bothered Hadyah before.

It bothered her now.

She knew, of course, that Natalia didn’t feel for Phil - hadn’t felt for Phil - what she and Clint still did (and as frustrating as he was, she knew the way they’d fallen for Phil Coulson was very much alike), but he’d been a friend and a lover and other things besides to the woman who was sharing Hadyah’s bed now more nights than not and she couldn’t imagine how Natalia carried it without the relief of tears.

How she carried even a fraction of everything she carried without them.

The first night Clint got on a plane for an indefinite assignment - a week, he guessed, but couldn’t say - Natalia demanded Hadyah beat her. There really wasn’t any other word for it, no matter how politely she asked; she’d picked out straps, paddles, two riding crops and a flogger worthy of some of the wilder parties of Hadyah’s graduate career. Restraints, the woman who shared a face with her _ptichka_ explained, were optional.

“Not tonight.” For the moment it took her to go on, she actually felt as if she could watch Natalia’s brain working through a catalog of emotions and expressions to find the one that would move her. “Not never, but not tonight.” Because she wasn’t sure if her willpower would hold out - in fact, because she was fairly certain it wouldn’t if Natalia worked at it hard enough - she’d pushed Natalia down into the bed and made love to her instead. It was rough and impatient and lingering, yes, but it wasn’t something she hadn’t done recently. Exploration wasn’t a thing she had any desire to use as an anesthetic again. Sometime near morning, raw-voiced and whispering, Natalia choked “I miss him” into her hair.

She didn’t have to say who she meant, and Hadyah didn’t have to ask.

 

* * *

 

“Hadyah, there’s someone to see you in the lobby,” the second violinist called from the stairs. “Since when do you hang out with bodybuilders?”

There was probably a time in her life - say, two years ago - when Hadyah would have yelled something exceptional smartass back about not letting him leave the building. There might be again, actually, if her newly regained ability to sit through movies with Natalia and Clint without crying every time someone died was a harbinger of things to come. At the moment, though, the best she could do was roll her eyes and assume that whatever was going on would be explained in due course (or handled by building security, depending). Still, all things considered, she left her instrument for the rest of her section to keep an eye on. Running in heels was hard enough without lugging a cello along with you.

Her first thought, when she finally got a look at him standing near the doors of the Grand Lobby in a leather jacket and jeans, was that bodybuilder wasn’t at all the right word for him. He was built, there was no question about that, but a frame like that didn’t come out of a gym (though it probably took a ridiculous amount of work to maintain it). She’d done a small house concert for Special Forces people once as part of a touring group, and they’d had the same look he did - hard but sleek, ready to take off at a run on a moment’s notice.

It would have been more impressive, probably, if she hadn’t seen Clint Barton without his shirt on at least once a week lately. Novelty had a way of wearing off.

“Hadyah Savchenko, ma’am?” he asked, extending a hand. “Steve Rogers. I was hoping I could talk to you privately for a few minutes.”

“Mister Rogers?” She couldn’t help the amused tone of her voice and didn’t much try, because she honestly didn’t much care for being ma’amed by men she didn’t know (and this one, she’d remember). “And how is the neighborhood today?”

He smiled and shook his head. It was ridiculously charming. “I’m sorry. If that was a pop culture reference I’m in no position to get it. Coffee?”

“You know, your parents must have been serious fans willing to put you through a lot of teasing as a kid. Not to mention winning the genetic lottery,” she said, stalling for time at the cost of a few wistful aches in her chest. _Phil would probably be able to itemize how different you look from the original model...._ “With all the media attention around New York, you could make a fortune in stripper-grams. At least, a slightly larger one than you probably would have made anyway.”

The face under the vintage Dodgers cap crinkled. “I...ma’am, have you...Is this a joke? Did Tony hire you?”

“Tony who?” Hadyah stared, then felt all the blood drain out of her face. “Stark?” she managed to get out in a croak.

“Yeah,” the Steve Rogers who was actually Captain America said. “Okay, not a joke. I’m sorry, ma’am. Even I have a hard time believing it sometimes.”

As much because he looked ready to try to stop her from swooning as because she was in the damned lobby of her own damned concert hall, Hadyah dragged in a couple of deep breaths and pulled herself together. Fortunately that worked pretty well. Unfortunately, somewhere in the process her brain-mouth filter slipped a gear. “Somewhere, my boyfriend’s ghost is groaning in embarrassment. He’d be seven shades of green over me actually meeting you.”

Steve surprised her by smiling in such a painful, fond way that she knew what he was about to say before he said it. “He’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually.”

“You two met, then?” Her voice tried to crack a little, but she waved away his sudden concern. “It’s fine. It’s just that I’ve been thinking for months about how much he would have liked to see you save the day and have your name in all the papers. Not to mention all the new memorabilia. So it’s just.... it’s a relief that he didn’t miss all of it, that’s all. One less regret.” She made herself shift gears, digging her nails into her palm for a moment or two just to feel something solid. “I like coffee. You can go and get me some. I’m going to go and sit by the stairs.”

Nodding, he pulled a little notepad and pen out of his jacket. “If you say it slow enough for me to write down all the bells and whistles I can maybe get it right,” he said. “I never thought coffee could get high tech, too.”

“Black. Sugar. And it’s not so much high tech as pretentious.” She crooked a little smile at him in spite of everything. “I can just imagine your first visit to a Starbucks.”

“I try not to think about it,” he smiled back.

Fortunately, he didn’t stand around waiting. She managed the walk in a straight, clean line all the way to the table by the stairs that offered the best excuse for privacy and then slid down into one of the chairs and rested her face in her hands.

The tears didn’t actually come before he came back, and it left her feeling anything but serene. On the other hand, if she yelled at Captain America, she was pretty sure Phil - wherever he was in whatever Valhalla they had for spies - would start trying to knock out the power or something equally ludicrous.

She settled for thanking him for the coffee and drinking it a little too hot. Which hurt a little, but it was a pain she could manage.

“I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to contact you,” Steve said, big hands wrapped around his own paper cup. “SHIELD has been on high alert since New York, and this is the first leave I’ve gotten longer than a few hours.”

“I don’t mind. If anything, it’s actually a relief. One of the only silver linings of the way he died is that there haven’t been a string of condolence callers or people I had to put on a brave face for.” She brushed her hair out of her face and smiled a little at his expression. “Strange thing to be grateful for, but I guess you look for the best parts of whatever happens if you have long enough to think about. So I appreciate the thought, but the apology’s not necessary. Phil would be thrilled you came, though.”

The quick pained smile came and vanished again. “I didn’t know him well, but I know the world is worse off for losing him. I’m very sorry for your loss. If you have any questions...well, I’m not even supposed to be here,” he admitted, completely without guilt or shame, “but for me the worst part is not knowing, so if you have any questions I’ll give you what I can.”

 _So would Clint or Natalia, if I’d asked them._ She smiled anyway, because there was something profoundly satisfying about knowing that this man - someone who, if he’d ever been ready to be honest about it, Phil would probably have admitted to modeling his life after - was actually someone worth following. Someone Phil would have been proud of finally meeting. “Death isn’t ever dignified or attractive, I don’t think. Phil would have died doing his duty as best he saw it, bravely and probably with a totally inappropriate joke or two, because that’s who he was all the time - even with me. I don’t know anything that you could say that would make him being gone easier than that.”

Steve studied her face, then nodded. “You’re right. About all of it.”

They sat in companionable silence for a while, drinking their coffee. She wasn’t embarrassed that she tried to read the label to see how Captain America took his. Unfortunately, barista was not one of her languages.

“Tony also sends his condolences,” Steve said after he’d finished. “I think the fact that he didn’t come shows that he cares, oddly enough. He also sent this.” A slim envelope came out of the jacket. “I don’t know how much it is, but he kept on saying that Phil would have wanted you to be taken care of.”

Given Tony Stark’s net worth, that probably meant more money than she’d ever see in her life. She let him put it on the table, rested her fingers on it. Thought about it.

Smiled.

“Thank you,” she said, pushing it back toward him as she stood up, “but I can take care of myself. I think that’s one of the reasons he found me such a nice change.” A few brushes of her fingers straightened her hair back to where it ought to be, and she had to admit that she took a certain pleasure in memorizing the look of surprise on Steve’s face. “Thank Mister Stark for me, anyway, and thank you for making the trip.”

She was most of the way to the stairs when a little guilt slipped in under the satisfaction, so she stopped and thought about it a few more seconds before she turned back around. “Phil had a soft spot for strays - kids with no family or who just needed a break. If Tony wants to do something that would make Phil happy, he can use it for that.”

“I’ll let him know,” Steve said, smiling. Then the little notepad came out again. “My number. Just in case.”

“I’m going to frame it and hang it over his things, just because you wrote it.” A couple of steps to meet him and take the piece of paper, and she indulged herself by squeezing his hand. Somewhere, one of the girls who’d hated her in high school was suffering unexplainable but acute indigestion.

For the first time, she saw a look of regret on Steve’s face. She gave his hand another quick squeeze and lowered her voice. Part of it was a desire to cheer him up, for course, but there were opportunities that only came along once in a lifetime. You had to seize them while they lasted. “It’s just as well for you that you two only met briefly,” she said in the deadpan she’d been practicing on her houseguests. “If you’d gotten to know him well, he’d probably have taken you for a ride in Lola and the two of you would have ended up necking or worse. At which point I’d have been honorbound to kill the most popular man in America, and wouldn’t that have been a mess?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, face bright red. “Yeah, that’s one word for it. Are you sure you don’t know Tony?”

“No. I have a feeling I’d end up slapping him.” Under the circumstances, though she felt obliged to reassure him a little. Just a little. “I wouldn’t actually have tried to kill you, anyway. I’d just have insisted he bring you home for dinner and a show.”

She started up the stairs before he managed to recover, burying her laughter against her hand, and by the time she got back to her cello she still had a smile on her face. It helped not to have actually looked in the envelope, of course. Not least because it would make it that much easier to totally infuriate Clint when she told him about turning it down. The rest of rehearsal went perfectly. 

Phil’s picture showed up on her smartphone when she set it in the car charger to start the drive home, the way it always did, and the smile got a little wider. “Darling,” she said softly, “you’ll never guess who I met today....”


	17. Chapter 17

_"It felt a lot longer than eight seconds." - Phil Coulson_

Lounging on one of the armchairs, Skye tapped something lazily on her laptop while munching Skittles. She looked so at home that Phil smiled briefly as he descended from his office slash quarters. The losses and betrayals still hurt too much for lasting happiness, but the fact that it was returning at all was a good sign.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had to put himself back together before. The scale of the trauma and disaster was the only difference. It would just take longer than before.

“Skye,” he called as he booted up the digital chart table, “time to get briefed.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t be sending someone else to talk to the super-dangerous assassins?” The smile on her face said that it wasn’t serious lip, at least for the moment - just her giving him a hard time on a previously settled issue. “You know May doesn’t need me. She has a way with people, right?”

Phil’s lips twitched again. “I’m counting on your excellent social and improvisational skills to get them on our side. That and your adorable vulnerability.”

“Didn’t SHIELD train super-secret assassins to be immune to adorable vulnerability? Because that seems like kind of a big thing to miss.”

He bounced the list of names and the corresponding SHIELD files over to her laptop. “Unfortunately, that particular training is imperfect, and you and your puppy-eyes are big guns.” He paused to let her skim the list. “May will wait until you’ve established contact. If the prospective assets need more convincing than the Shibboleth, she’s your credibility as well as your protection. Triplett will be undercover nearby as backup, if necessary. Do not mention any other team members by name. Do not answer questions about TAHITI or related subjects. Do not ever make them feel cornered. Good so far?”

“With you. Cornered bad. Information spill bad.” She blinked at the list a couple of times. “Wow. These are pretty scary people, boss. I mean, just kill counts alone is up there with some national armed forces.”

Phil nodded. “They’re very dangerous, but also hyper-competent. That means they’ll be highly unlikely to become violent in a public area. Plus we’re ninety-seven percent sure they’re loyal to SHIELD. It’s a tricky assignment, Skye, but I wouldn’t send you in if I thought there was even a ten percent chance they’d use force.”

“Thanks, boss.” Skye tapped her fingers against the keyboard for a moment, doing whatever magic it was that she always seemed to do with files to shake meaning out of them. She’d have been a wonder of an analyst, back when SHIELD could afford to have people who were just analysts.

Back when, technically, SHIELD had existed.

“Oh. Hey. That’ll make May happy.” Skye looked up from her screen with a cheerful smile. “Two for one.”

Years of training kept Phil’s raised eyebrow completely innocent of worry. “Oh?”

“Yeah, Barton and Romanoff are shacking up together lately.” She paused to let her eyes bug a little. “Wow. You want me to talk to Romanoff. Didn’t she once, like, kill a whole regiment with her bare hands and iron thighs?”

His expression must have registered something, because she waved her hands in protest. “Hey, I didn’t come up with the phrase, okay?”

He let her stew for a few long seconds.

“I know. And, yeah, she basically did.” The hacker’s skin went a little pale at that. He barreled on. “Give May their location. Any other questions? Not ones involving body counts.”

“Um, not really.” She got up, reached for the intercom and then, finger still on the call button, seemed to remember something. “Do you know any good Thai places in Portland?”

Agent Phillip Coulson was a professional. That was why he covered his panicked gasp with a cough and walked at a reasonable speed to the staircase rather than running screaming like he really, really wanted to.

“May, why doesn’t he like Portland?” Skye asked over the - God help him - general intercom.

May’s silence was a particularly eloquent _I don’t know, but I plan to find out._

“No, really, why?”

There was another silence, and then May’s voice, as calm as ever but with a hint of _your secrets are not safe from me, Phil Coulson._ “We’re on autopilot, due to arrive in about three hours.”

Phil made it to the stairs and then paused, contemplating locking himself in the Box instead.

Nah. It would only delay the inevitable.

May knocked on, then opened, his door about a minute later. Folded her arms. Waited.

“No.” Phil mustered all his supervisory authority. “I absolutely do not want to talk about it.”

May was unimpressed.

“It is in no way a possible threat to the team, SHIELD two point oh, or the safety of civilians.”

She continued to be unmoved.

He put some files back in their drawers. Then he rearranged the desk organizer.

When he looked up, May hadn’t budged.

“It’s personal.”

An impassive eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch.

“You are dismissed,” he tried, compressing his voice to get a good edge on it. It would have worked with one of the junior agents. He was sure of that.

The level of patience that woman could display was positively inhuman.

Without consulting him first, his lungs exhaled a long breath, venting his resolve with it.

Dammit.

“I, um.” He cleared his throat. “I was involved with a woman from Portland.”

“And?”

God, she was going to make him spell it out. Apparently this was not one of her merciful moods.

“And it ended when I died. She doesn’t know I got better.”

The eyebrow was inching up again. “So you need to stay on the plane.”

“Yes.” He paused. Might as well be hung for a sheep, etc. “There is also a similar situation with Barton.”

“Similar,” May inquired in a sepulchral tone.

His expression stayed steady, but each of Phil’s fingers tapped on the desk in quick succession.

“Involved previous to death, doesn’t know it was temporary.”

May’s lips twitched. “You are aware that he’s recorded kill shots with his bow at over a mile, sir?”

There was, okay, maybe a little pleading in his expression now. Just a little. “I’ll keep away from the windows.”

“You do that.” Shaking her head as if he was a particularly raw recruit, she let herself out of his office and shut the door behind her.

Very slowly, Phil’s forehead thumped onto the desk.

* * *

“Clint.”

The deadly assassin frowned with his eyes closed and scratched his balls. “Wha?” There were a few stray potato chip crumbs stuck to his undershirt, not to mention the couch cushion under him.

Hadyah Savchenko sighed and looked up at the ceiling of her apartment as if to ask God why she had, after decades of carefully using birth control, been saddled with a teenage boy who just happened to be thirty-something for a houseguest. The ceiling was not forthcoming.

She was going to have to change the couch covers again.

“Someone called up from the ground floor looking for you. I don’t want to wake Natalia,” she explained with more discipline than genuine patience. “Would you find out what they want, please?”

Gray-blue eyes snapped open. “For me? By name?”

Hadyah wondered if she would ever get used to housemates who found it upsetting when someone knew their name. Not that they didn’t have reason, but it was still one of the stranger things about her daily life.

On the other hand, she was getting through most weeks without crying into Natalia’s hair. That was something.

She decided that, given the crumbs on the couch, she was allowed to have a little fun with Clint. “Yes. A girl - quite pretty, if you like them young and wide-eyed. Are you going to have to go into hiding from Natalia? Because I don’t think my apartment is big enough for that.”

He frowned again, dragging on the jeans he’d left on the floor. “Not that I remember. But I haven’t gotten that drunk in a while, so probably not.”

“Please go and find out what’s going on, Clint, so that I can stop worrying that she’s here to kill us all and that you’re going to leave a mess on my front step?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” he grumbled, squeezing her shoulder on the way out. He hadn’t bothered to put shoes on.

Two minutes later, Clint came in through the front door, a woman who was not the girl Hadyah had talked to on his heels. She was older, Asian, and cased the apartment in the half-second it took for her to step across the threshold. Then she nodded once, and the pretty girl from the stoop walked in behind her.

“Sorry, Hadyah. They’re okay. Wanted to talk shop. Didn’t think your porch was the best place.”

She took a moment to look both of the women over, and was not exactly thrilled. They had the same look that all of ... that all the people at her dinner parties in Washington had carried off so effortlessly, the one that said ‘we’re perfectly harmless, pay us no attention whatsoever unless you want to cause us trouble, in which case we will kill you.’

“No, my kitchen table is definitely better,” she said, not bothering to muffle the sarcasm too much. “I’ll just set some tea running, shall I?”

“Thanks, we appreciate it,” the girl said, clutching her laptop a little too tightly to be totally at ease. “We’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

“Your security is very good,” the tall Asian woman said in a very polite voice. “I didn’t even see the cameras.”

Hadyah smiled and nodded and made tea, because explaining that there actually weren't any just seemed like too much trouble at the moment.

While Clint hadn’t said anything or sent a message via any means Hadyah knew of, Natalia appeared in the living room only a minute or so after the strangers were seated around the kitchen table. Considering what they’d been doing before Natalia started taking a nap, she probably ought to be a little offended, but she’d had to make the adjustment to how inexhaustible the younger woman was within a few weeks of sharing an apartment more or less full time. Her stamina was simply unreal. On the other hand, she’d decided to come in her house clothes - halter top, hoodie, cute college-girl jeans - instead of something that screamed Secret Agent. Probably just to make Hadyah feel flattered - which it did - but maybe for some other reason that only made sense to Natalia.

“For us they send The Cavalry, Clint,” Natasha Romanoff said dryly as she picked a chair that put her back to the wall and turned it around to straddle it. “Don’t you feel special?”

“Oh, yeah,” he deadpanned from his deceptively relaxed slouch against the counter. “Like the middle of the bullseye.”

“So,” the girl said cheerfully, “I’m Skye. No last name, trust me, it’s better this way. And you know Agent May, apparently.” The assassins exchanged a look that could have been shared boredom or could have been a plan to take out the strangers and hide the bodies. Hadyah pulled cups down from the shelves and started making dinner plans. The girl rattled on for a while.

“...and now that the whole thing basically exploded, we have an opportunity to recreate SHIELD. We can choose the directions it takes.” Clint rolled his shoulders. He got fidgety if you made him sit still too long. Hadyah had no idea how he managed to find the calm of a sniper. Natalia, for her part, seemed preoccupied with her nails - a sure sign that she was either contemplating hurting someone or thinking about how soon she could leave. “You two have a history of thinking outside the box? Here’s your chance to live outside the box.”

Clint’s relaxed posture froze. “How long did you say you’ve been with SHIELD?”

To her credit, the girl didn’t get flustered by the abrupt question. “I didn’t, but about ten months.”

Natasha smiled. It was pleasant, polite, almost warm. Sympathetic. Which meant, if Hadyah was any judge, that she was faking it. The chances of bodies needing to be disposed of went up a few notches. “After the Battle of New York, then.”

The girl nodded. “Yeah, I’m a noob, but I’ve been through a lot with my team and I learn fast.”

Another shared look between Clint and Natalia. That was definitely a violent solution planning stare. Hadyah set teacups in front of everyone, then sat down next to Natasha and touched her hand under the table gently. After a moment, fingers laced with hers.

“So who exactly is running this reunion tour?” Clint’s tone was belligerent, but Hadyah had actually heard him angry and this wasn’t it. More posturing.

“A high-clearance-level agent who has the chops to do it. I can’t disclose his name, but I can tell you that Nick Fury handed the reins over personally.”

Just like that, her hands were shaking too hard to hold her teacup. Hadyah swore under her breath, flattening her fingers against the wood of the table to steady them, and she didn’t know if she was swearing at Clint and Natasha for bringing this into her home or SHIELD for any of a thousand reasons or just the world for going on spinning and reminding her that Phil Coulson wasn’t a part of it anymore.

Natalia’s breathing changed subtly, and Hadyah knew that the Russian’s attention was on her whether she was looking at the cellist or not. In her attempts to regain her equilibrium, she didn’t see Clint’s face, but the sudden wide-eyed glances from the girl told her that it must be pretty grim.

“Okay, I’m not sure what just happened but I know it wasn’t good,” Skye said, and even as it grated on her Hadyah appreciated the girl’s directness.

Clint snorted, stood, and walked out. He didn’t quite slam the bedroom door.

“I think I’m going to take a moment to catch my breath,” Hadyah said in a voice that she very much hoped sounded calmer than she felt. “Excuse me, please.”

Then she stood up, walked to the bedroom door, opened it and closed it again very, very carefully.

He was facing the window, shoulders hunched, fingers digging into his upper arms where they were crossed. Hadyah had, slowly, gotten used to the width of his shoulders and the gym-rat size of his arms and chest. Until she’d met him, she’d always imagined archers being built more like Legolas or Robin Hood - lithe, strong, but not big. Not like someone who could also punch out half a dozen soldiers if he had to.

She’d never been particularly attracted to bodybuilders. If she was honest with herself, Clint probably wouldn’t have been her type even if he didn’t have enough repulsive living habits to make her want to strangle him at least twice on any given day. But they’d spent two years trying to dig their way out of the same impossible, strangling, desperate grief together, and no amount of adolescent idiocy would have convinced her to let him stay anywhere else.

Besides, Natasha made such an adorably incoherent mess of him that it would have seemed downright cruel to take him away - like packing someone’s favorite puppy up and shipping it to a shelter.

“Clint,” she whispered as she carefully moved in behind him, her way of letting him know that she was going to touch him if he didn’t say anything. When he didn’t, she rested her hands on his shoulders and, after a few more seconds, her cheek against his hair. He’d rather have had Phil where she was standing and, truthfully, she’d rather have made the same trade for him. That said, they were what was available. They’d have to do.

“Someone who knows us very, very well is fucking with us for their own agenda. Don’t know how they got the Cavalry, but after April I’d believe almost anyone was Hydra.” He sighed. Once he would have shouted, ranted, stormed out or engaged in other such dramatics, but over the last two years his anger had become more and more weary. “That, or....”

“Or?”

He paused, then shook his head. “No. It’s gotta be someone fucking with us. The only question is why they didn’t play the new-SHIELD act straight. They don’t want us dead, so why try to spook us?” He sighed again, this time with frustration. “Nat’ll have ideas. She’s the one with the spy brain.”

“Miss Young and Bright Eyed isn’t ‘straight’?” Hadyah rubbed his shoulders slowly. “Because she seems absurdly earnest to me.”

He went still. Didn’t tell her to move, but that was probably coming soon. “I guess she could have picked up the phrase second-hand.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

“‘The phrase.’ Is this a call sign thing? Spy-speak?” Her voice was trying to go tight, but she wouldn’t let it. “Is something going on that I need to know about, other than you and Natasha having couple-telepathy talks about body disposal?”

Shrugging her off, he dropped to the bed, chin on his hands. “She said, ‘Live outside the box.’ I mean, a lot of people heard it, but they only heard it during the recruitment speech. You talk to someone once, you don’t remember their words. How they made you feel, sure, especially for a life-changing career move. You have to spend time with someone using the same phrase over and over to pick it up.”

Hadyah’s blood congealed into something more like syrup or ice-water, and her hands started shaking again. “You’re talking about Phil - that’s the only time your voice aches like that. She would have to have known him.”

“I’m trying to think,” he almost choked, eyes screwed shut. “Who else was there when he was recruiting. Coulda been Sitwell, but he never worked with the fresh meat. Anslem, but she was shot in Belarus in October of ‘13, had to retire. Fury didn’t have time to wait around during elevator speeches.” He was silent for a long moment. Then he looked up at her with an utterly lost look. “That leaves me and Nat. She might know someone else, but...Christ.”

She just looked at him, because the pain on his face was real and tangible and not like the choking tightness trying to crawl up her throat and kill her. It made her angry - a bright, searing kind of anger that put life into her limbs - and she wrapped her arms around it and clung to it.

Clint didn’t actually have time to get up off the bed before she flung the door open, slamming it against the wall in the process, and stalked out to her kitchen.

The girl and her bodyguard were still there, and the girl at least looked relatively relaxed as she talked. Natalia was performing reluctant but interested listener very well, or at least well enough to put the other two women at ease, and Hadyah thought her lover must be manipulating them for as much information as possible. That or she was just waiting to see how long it took Clint to snap and try to shoot them. It wouldn’t be totally unlike Natasha to have a bet with him on that. She was too furious to care about how strange it made her life sound that that seemed normal.

Her hand made a very satisfying bang when she slammed it down on the table. Skye jumped. Natasha and May both got very aggressively relaxed. She didn’t care about that, either.

“You.” Her voice surprised her by being completely level in spite of the undertone of restrained violence. “Skye-with-no-last-name. You have a cell phone, an earpiece, some crazy piece of communications tech I don’t know the acronym for. Yes?”

“Um. Yes.” The girl’s eyes were about the size of dinner plates.

“Good. You get on it, right now, and you tell whoever you’re working for that you have two minutes or less to explain your relationship with Phillip Coulson or I swear to the God I don’t believe in that I will walk out of this apartment and leave you alone with the two most terrifying people I know until I come back and they tell me what your answer is. Is that clear enough for you, or should I write it down?”

The girl just stared in frozen terror for a moment, the other agent no longer able to hide her tension. Then Skye blinked and put a hand to her ear.

“Wait, what? She just threatened to have Romanoff torture me!”

Her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish, and then she dug the receiver out of her ear and put it on the table. “It’s for you,” she said dryly.

Hadyah’s hand didn’t shake at all when she picked it up and carefully fitted it into her ear. “Hello, darling,” she said, eyes fixed on the window and her hands pressed flat against the table because whether she was right or wrong about the completely insane idea crashing around in her head and wrecking her mental furniture, her knees were likely to give out the moment the anger died down even a little. “I think you have some explaining to do. I’ll have coffee waiting.”

There was a long pause, and then an oh-so-familiar inhalation that almost broke her.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, and meant it. She felt hot wetness on her cheeks, and knew she was crying. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Then there was a click, and the only thing that stopped her from hitting the floor was Natalia’s reflexes.


	18. Chapter 18

The coffee was surprisingly good, given that it had been brewed by a super-assassin with most of his attention on the second-scariest woman in the room after she basically fainted. Also, from what Skye had heard about Hawkeye he was about as domestic as a stray dog, but, hey, coffee.

She was trying really, really hard to drink hers slowly. Hopefully there was enough milk in it to slow down the caffeine. She was already totally nervous - okay, kind of terrified - and being wired would not help, no matter how good it tasted or how much she wanted something to do with her hands. It wasn’t like she could do a nice soothing intel dig. It didn’t take a Level Seven to know opening her laptop was a terrible idea, even if she was going through withdrawal.

So, coffee. Slowly.

Everyone but May had coffee, too, and they were arranged in the living room like some kind of Jane Austen informal social hour: May on the chair next to hers, Barton, Savchenko (who Skye was beginning to suspect wasn’t actually a safe-house operator or matron or whatever they were called), and Romanoff in a line on the couch, all with their own cute china teacup and saucer.

Even Agent Coulson had a cup, but his was on the coffee table on account of his standing in the middle of the room. The extra chairs had been pushed to face the corner, and it was very clear how deeply he was in shit from the moment he walked through the door. It was like some domestic parody of a court martial board.

Either Hadyah Savchenko was the head of the secret governing council of the world, or this wasn’t SHIELD business at all. At the moment, Skye wasn’t ruling anything out.

“You look well. Very fit.” Hadyah opened the proceedings in a polite, natural voice that was only a little scratchy from how hard she’d been crying while Romanoff - who Skye had not imagined as one of nature’s caretakers before that moment - rocked her on the floor of the kitchen.

“Ah. Thank you,” Phil said. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else on the planet. Including locked in a room with Garrett.

“Especially for a dead guy,” Barton added. He looked like he was trying to glare a hole through Phil’s head. If anyone could, it was probably Hawkeye, but she couldn’t really blame the guy. Phil being ‘dead’ had been super-important to SHIELD, but it was still a rotten way to treat someone, especially if they’d been more friends than co-workers.

Coulson glanced between him and Savchenko - Hadyah. Skye figured that witnessing ...whatever this was earned her a first-name basis, if only in her head.

“Did you get to see the service?” Hadyah interrupted before Phil could get any sort of answer organized. “Natalia tells me it was very moving. I wasn’t there. Apparently they don’t let long distance girlfriends attend these things. For security reasons. I actually probably wouldn’t have known you were dead if they hadn’t come by to tell me themselves. Is there someone you’re going to have to put them on report to for that, or is that pretty much you these days?”

Unfortunately, Skye had chosen to take a sip as Hadyah started talking. Fortunately for what was left of her dignity, nobody in the room seemed to spend any attention on her nearly choking to death.

Once she got her breath back and had sopped up most of the coffee from her blouse (poor, poor blouse), Coulson was talking.

“...eight days. There was a procedure involving alien technology. It might still kill me permanently, or make me go crazy, or induce mutations. We don’t know.”

Skye wasn’t sure which was more mind-boggling: that Phil had had a girlfriend before, that he hadn’t told her he was dead OR alive, that he was telling her information people had died to protect, or that he was standing there as if Barton and Romanoff didn’t look like they were one sentence away from killing him right there in the apartment. She was having a hard time not running away herself, and they weren’t even paying attention to her anymore.

“Two years.” That was Barton. His hands were white on his coffee cup, and he put it down so he could make fists. “Two fucking years, Coulson.”

AC took a deep breath, and looked at Barton with more regret than she’d ever seen on his face. Which was just like him. Her father figure was perpetually making harsh decisions, no matter how sad he was about it after.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It wasn’t my idea, but I could see that there was a lot of important work that....”

“If you finish that sentence with anything involving the good of all mankind, need-to-know security or for our own good, darling, I’ll let Natasha drag you behind her car before we continue this conversation. I’m pretty sure she knows how to do that without killing someone,” Hadyah said in a voice that was much too mild for the topic under discussion.

“Yes,” Romanoff added, almost cheerfully. “That hardly ever happens.”

Okay, if Hadyah had Romanoff at her command, the older woman was definitely the scariest person in the room.

Also, Skye was starting to want to harm Phil a little herself. Letting your girlfriend think you were dead for two years was, well, not he-who-shall-not-be-named level of betrayal, but definitely not good.

“I’m sorry,” Phil repeated, then shut up.

“It’s bad enough that you did it to me,” Hadyah whispered, and the way she looked at him actually made Phil Coulson flinch. “I’m a grown woman who knew what she was getting into and has had her share of exceptionally lousy break-ups - though this is working up to being a record, admittedly. But you did it to _them_ , Phil, and all you left them to cope with was me. Did your surveillance people tell you that Natalia and I had to practically feed and bathe Clint for months when he wasn’t on deployment?”

“What?!” Skye blurted. “You and Barton and _Romanoff?!_ ”

Phil looked at his shoes. Hadyah looked at Phil. May looked at the ceiling. The two deadly assassins who were apparently also her boss’s exes looked at Skye like she’d grown a second head.

“I, uh, sorry,” she stammered, trying to look innocuous. “I won’t talk again, I promise. Or I could leave,” she added hopefully.

“No.” Savchenko, Barton and Romanoff were definitely in some kind of relationship, because nobody who wasn’t could answer in stereo quite that effectively.

“Okay,” Skye squeaked, and tried very hard to make herself invisible. It didn’t work, but after a minute the heat was back on Phil.

“You make it sound like I was disabled or something,” Clint grumbled at Hadyah. “Not that that makes it anything near okay, Phil.”

Natasha’s eyebrow rose precipitously. “You do remember the three full bags of trash we had to remove from the guest room when you left for Kiev, don’t you? We practically repainted the walls. The sheets were like touching the shroud of Turin.”

Skye grimaced. Boys were gross.

“I could have cleaned, I just didn’t feel like it,” he muttered, glaring at Phil, who only looked more miserable.

Hadyah sighed and stood up, then circled the table and put her arms around him. In her bare feet they were almost exactly the same height, and the dark spill of her hair practically covered his face.  She knew Phil Coulson, and she knew what devotion he could inspire, and she was really, really pissed with what he had done with it even as she was touched by the tenderness in Hadyah’s body language, but if someone told this story to her a year ago she’d have called them a liar, because it could only possibly end in tears and yelling and Phil getting thrown out.

“It was wrong,” Hadyah murmured. “However long you have, whatever happens while you’re here, it’s not yours to hide from us. Not from me, not from Clint, not even from Natalia.  You talk to us - that’s what lovers do. Tell me you understand that, _radost moya._ ”

Coulson blinked tears from his eyes, and his arms went around her. “Yeah,” he said, voice wavering. “It was wrong. Really wrong. I’m so, so sorry, and if you’ll have me back, I’m yours.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she whispered. “I just got you back. You think I’m going to throw you out now? _Durak._ Now go sort yourself with Clint while I figure out how you’re going to make this up to me.”

He kissed her, then, and Skye had to look away because it was too private, too intimate, and if she kept watching she wasn’t going to be able to go back to thinking of Phil as her mentor or her boss or even her sort-of dad without weird tangly feelings about Hadyah she was so not ready for.

Thankfully, it was over soon, and then Phil was on one knee in front of Barton and she was really not ready for the level of raw emotion on either of their faces. Sure, she liked a good slash fic as much as the next girl, but it was different in person. Like you weren’t wearing all of your clothes and were afraid someone was going to notice.

And, again, father figure. So much no.

“Okay, sorry, I really need to leave now,” she whispered to Hadyah, adding pleading puppy-dog eyes for good measure. “Please. He’s like my dad. I’m going to be scarred.”

The older woman’s eyes lit up with laughter as she cocked her head to the side, probably checking on Clint and Phil, and then there were _sounds she could not unhear._ “Under the circumstances,” Hadyah said, agonizingly slowly, “I suppose you can leave now.”

“Oh god oh god oh god oh god.” Skye closed her eyes as much as she could without running into walls, grabbed her laptop, and got the fuck out of Dodge.

She found an adorably un-hip coffee shop three doors down (thank you, Portland) and plugged into their wifi and a large (decaf) mocha and tried to think soothing hackery thoughts.

About two minutes after she was settled, May slipped into the chair across from her.

“Romanoff and Barton,” she said, sounding slightly less imperturbable than usual.

Skye groaned and hid her face in her hands. “That did just happen, right? I’m not having some kind of really weird nightmare set in Portland for some reason? I liked Portland,” she whined.

“You are not dreaming. I need tea.” May stood up and headed for the counter, face determined. “A lot of tea. And then we are going back to the Bus.”

Skye bit her lip. “How bad would it be if we left without him? Just for a little while.”

“Do you think he’d notice?”

“Ew ew ew ew. Oh my god, I used to like you, too!”

* * *

“Darling?”

Phil took a deep breath. On the one hand, he was pretty sure he had only minutes left before heart failure. On the other hand, he’d been in and out of bed with two of the most gorgeous and dangerous people on the planet (not to mention Hadyah) all night, so it wasn’t the worst way to go.

“Phil, _radost moya,_ you aren’t allowed to pass out yet.”

“Not sure any of us has much say in that one.”

Hadyah laughed, low and sweet and warm, and it almost hurt to hear. He didn’t ever want her to stop.

“I feel like I ought to tell Clint not to sleep on the window seat,” she murmured eventually, her fingers slowly winding their way through his, “but I don’t want to wake him. I tried to tell Natalia the two of them could use the bed in another few minutes.”

He squeezed her hand gently. “If he’s tired enough, he can sleep on anything. He once spent the night on a howitzer.”

“I don’t want to know. It’s just going to make me more nervous when you’re flying around not visiting us.” She kissed him, slow and sweet and lingering, and then whispered into his mouth. “I’ve decided how you’re going to make it up to me.”

“If it’s ethical and in my power, it’s yours.” He threaded his free hand into her hair.

“Mmm.” Her sigh of satisfaction vibrated against his shoulder. “Marry me. Clint, too, or he’ll never stop complaining.”

Phil went still for a moment. “So, not to rain on the parade, but are you going to flip a coin to see who gets the legal marriage?”

“You’re the head of SHIELD and the most powerful spy on the planet,” she murmured contentedly. “You’ll figure out how to make it work.”

“I thought you didn’t like it when I pulled strings on the job.”

“Just this once,” his fiancee murmured into his jaw as her hand settled over his heart, “I’ll make an exception.”

 


End file.
